WHAT'S 
THE  WORLD 
COMING  TO? 


oft 


RUPERT  HUGHES 


EX-LIBRIS 

C  LARKS  ON 
MILLER 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 


3   1822  01174  6138 


.14 


WHAT'S    THE   WORLD 
COMING    TO? 


BOOKS  BY 
RUPERT  HUGHES 

WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

THE  CUP  OF  FURY 

CLIPPED  WINGS 

EMPTY  POCKETS 

THE  FAIRY  DETECTIVE 

IN   A   LITTLE    TOWN 

THE  LAST  ROSE  OF  SUMMER 

LONG    EVER    AGO 

THE  OLD  NEST 

THE  THIRTEENTH  COMMANDMENT 

THE   UNPARDONABLE   SIN 

WE  CAN'T  HAVE   EVERYTHING 

WHAT  WILL  PEOPLE  SAY? 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS.   NEW  YORK 
ESTABLISHED   1817 


[See  p.  63 


SHE    NOTED   HOW    BROWNER    AND    BIGGER    HE    WAS. 
SHE    WAS    AFRAID   OF    HIM! 


WHAT'S  THE 
WORLD  COMING  TO? 


by 
RUPERT  HUGHES 

Author  of 

"WHAT  WILL  PEOPLE  SAY?"  "THB  UNPARDONABLE  SIN" 
'THE  CUP  OF  FURY'I  "THE  THIRTEENTH  COMMANDMENT"  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED  BY 

FRANK  SNAPP 


Harper    &.  Brothers   Publishers 
New  York  and  London 


WHAT'S  THE  WOULD  COMING  To? 


Copyright,  1920.  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published,  May,  IQJO 

c-u 


CONTENTS 
BOOK  I 

PACK 

MONEY  COMES  IN i 

BOOK  II 
MONEY  GOES  OUT 83 

BOOK  III 
HONOR  COMES  IN 155 

BOOK  IV 
HONOR  GOES  OUT 203 

BOOK  V 
LOVE  GOES  OUT 297 

BOOK  VI 
LOVE  COMES  IN 359 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

SHE  NOTED  How  BROWNER  AND  BIGGER  HE  WAS.    SHE 

WAS  AFRAID  OF  HIM  ! ' Frontispiece 

THE  NYMPH  ALONE  WAS  UNPERTURBED Pacing  p.  12 

APRIL'S  WAITER  CAME  BACK  WITH  MARVELOUS  WORDS.  "        16 

BOB  WAS  IN  A  STATE  OF  FOOLISH  TERROR "      192 

THE  INFATUATE  ZEB  LUNGED  FOR  IT "      254 

"I'M  GOIN'  TAKE  YOUR  CLUB  AWAY  AN'  EVERYTHING." 

"THAT'S  A  DOMD  GOOD  IDEA,"  SAID  OFFICER  TWOMEY  "      308 

SHE  DECIDED  THAT  SCULPTURE  WAS  NOT  FOR  HER    .    .  "      340 


Book    I 
MONEY   COMES    IN 


WHAT'S   THE    WORLD 
COMING   TO? 


CHAPTER  I 

OF  the  two  young  and  exceedingly  1919  women  seated 
in  the  Plaza  Hotel  at  luncheon,  only  one  realized  that 
she  had  too  much  money.  She  was  suffering  from  a  sudden 
rush  of  wealth  to  the  bank-account,  and  it  made  her  head 
swim.  Later  she  would  declare  that  she  had  not  half  enough. 
This  also  happens  with  drink — or  used  to. 

It  is  the  curse  of  money,  as  of  other  intoxicants,  that  no 
one  ever  gets  just  exactly  enough.  Both  wealth  and  drink 
were  therefore  abolished  by  law  in  certain  parts  of  the  world 
in  the  mirable  year  that  followed  the  horrible  years  of  the 
War  of  Wars.  Russia  made  wealth  a  crime;  and  America, 
liquor. 

April  Summerlin  was  the  too-rich  girl's  rather  too-pink 
label.  Her  mother  had  named  her  after  the  month  that 
brought  her  to  earth.  In  due  time  Mrs.  Summerlin  found 
occasion  to  say  that  "July  Fourth  "  would  have  been  a  more 
prophetic  title  for  her  highly  inflammable  child — especially 
in  view  of  her  precocious  engagements  to — and  with — the 
lad  on  the  neighboring  plantation. 

Robert  Taxter's  name  gave  no  indication  of  his  character 
except  to  those  peculiar  people  who  believe  that  the  number 
of  letters  in  one's  name  has  a  vital  influence  on  his  character 
and  career. 

Bob  Taxter  was  a  fire-eating  Southron,  a  fire-breather, 
and  a  fire-fighter.  April  had  also  great  talents  for  spon 
taneous  combustion. 

At  the  age  of  three  Bob  and  April  began  their  harrowing 

3 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

alternation  of  kiss-and-make-up  and  scrap-and-break-up. 
At  five  they  announced  their  engagement  to  the  delighted 
guests  at  a  children's  picnic.  Before  the  picnic  was  half 
over  they  had  fought  and  scratched  and  become  reconciled. 
They  went  home  parted  forever — and  were  re-engaged  next 
day  at  Sunday-school. 

From  then  on,  that  part  of  Virginia  in  which  the  Taxters 
and  Summerlins  were  important  was  kept  in  a  state  of  de 
licious  uncertainty  as  to  whether  or  not  it  were  safe  to 
mention  Bob  to  April  or  April  to  Bob,  or  unsafe  not  to. 

The  worst  of  it  was  their  intense  incandescence  in  either 
love  or  hate.  When  it  was  love,  there  was  no  sacrifice  too 
great  for  either  to  make  for  the  other;  when  it  was  hate, 
there  was  no  sacrifice  too  great  for  either  to  make  of  the 
other.  Both  always  rushed  at  once  into  violent  affairs  with 
alien  beings,  flaunting  the  new  sweetheart  like  a  red  rag — 
"just  to  show  a  certain  person  that  (s)he  is  not  the  only 
person  in  the  world."  Later  they  dropped  the  poor  red 
rags  in  the  dust  "just  to  show  a  certain  person  that  (s)he 
is  the  only  person  in  the  world."  This  was  pretty  rough 
on  the  poor  red  rags,  but  true  love  is  ruthless. 

By  and  by  the  placid  community  accepted  the  affair  as 
an  institution  like  electricity  with  its  positive  and  negative 
attractions  and  repulsions — a  sort  of  make-and-break  com 
bination. 

Bob  went  to  the  Virginia  Military  Institute  and  was 
graduated  thence.  April  went  to  the  Foxcroft  School  at 
Middleburg,  and  after  that  to  New  York,  where  at  the 
Art  Students'  League  she  dabbled  in  ambition  and  oily 
clay. 

The  correspondence  of  Bob  and  April  was  enlivened  by  a 
vivacious  alternation  between  love-letters  and  hate-letters, 
with  occasional  coincidences  in  which  each  received  from 
the  other  a  letter  of  groveling  apology  and  self -denunciation. 

Then  the  war  came  and  parted  them  in  earnest,  giving  all 
their  quarrels  a  nursery  appearance.  Bob  got  abroad  in 
the  aviation  corps.  April  could  not  manage  it  in  any  corps, 
largely  because  a  great  man  who  had  once  loved  her  mother 
was  in  the  State  Department  somewhere  and  saw  to  it,  by 
prearrangement  with  Mrs.  Summerlin,  that  all  of  Miss 
Summerlin's  frantic  demands  for  a  passport  were  mysteri- 

4 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

ously  denied.  When  April  went  to  him,  he  promised  to  use 
his  influence,  but  always  reported  immovable  opposition 
somewhere.  So  home  she  stayed,  concealing  a  broken  heart 
and  a  decidedly  unbroken  body  in  the  swagger  blouse,  skirt, 
and  breeches  of  the  Women's  Motor  Corps. 

Two-thirds  of  the  Regular  Army  officers  stayed  at  home, 
too,  and  countless  impatient  warriors  gnawed  their  own 
bitter  hearts  in  helpless  shame,  but  none  of  them  was 
bitterer  than  April.  Like  them,  she  did  the  next  best  thing 
at  hand. 

She  had  been  running  ambulances  and  trucks  and  touring- 
cars  about  New  York  for  a  year  or  more,  and  had  advanced 
from  private  to  sergeant,  carrying  all  sorts  of  military  freight 
to  all  sorts  of  destinations. 

Now  she  faced  the  future  with  anxiety.  The  war  was  all 
over  but  the  finals.  She  would  have  to  return  to  cits — 
longer  skirts,  conventionalities,  escorts,  and  so  forth.  Bob 
was  not  back  from  France  and  might  have  been  dead  for 
months,  for  all  she  knew — the  reports  of  casualties  were 
hopelessly  delayed  and  confused,  and  even  the  listed  dead 
were  constantly  turning  up  alive. 

To  add  to  her  confusion,  a  neglected  elderly  relative  up  and 
died,  and  his  will  exploded  like  a  hand-grenade,  scattering 
gold  fragments  among  unsuspecting  relatives. 

It  was  this  disaster  that  April  was  bemoaning  in  the  Plaza 
Hotel  in  her  first  realization  of  the  dismal  fact  that  money 
is  always  in  a  state  of  paucity  or  nimiety.  She  was  telling 
her  troubles  across  a  gaudy  Spanish  omelet  to  a  very  smart 
young  woman,  Claudia  Reece,  who  lent  a  sympathetic  ear 
without  understanding  in  the  least  why  April  should  be  so 
despondent  over  her  escape  from  financial  mediocrity. 

The  cruelty  of  the  new  money  was  that  April  feared  its 
effect  on  her  old  love-affair.  That  off-again-on-again  en 
gagement  with  Bob  was  threatened  at  last  by  something 
more  dangerous  than  the  fact  that  Bob  or  April  had  danced 
once  too  often  with  another  girl  or  man,  or  had  said  some 
thing  better  left  unsaid  or  failed  to  say  something  better  not 
left  unsaid,  or  had  done  any  one  of  the  infinite  infinitesimals 
that  stir  love  to  anger. 

Claudia,  born  a  New-Yorker,  had  never  known  anything 
but  wealth  and  had  become  inured  to  it.  She  had  met 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

April  when  they  were  pupils  together  at  Foxcroft.  They 
had  ridden  to  the  hounds  together  with  the  Middleburg 
Hounds  and  had  been  in  turn  mistress  of  the  beagles.  They 
could  follow  a  rabbit  on  foot  for  miles,  and  could  run  a  young 
man  to  death  fox-trotting  for  hours. 

Claudia  had  exerted  a  pull  and  got  abroad.  But  in  Paris 
she  had  tried  to  console  both  a  lonely  major-general  and  a 
minor  liaison-officer  and  had  sassed  a  very  important  person 
who  warned  her.  So  she  had  been  sent  home.  Claudia 
would  sass  anybody.  $he  will  doubtless  sass  St.  Peter  if 
he  asks  her  to  throw  away  her  cigarette  before  she  steps 
Inside. 

She  returned  to  humble  canteen  work,  washing  dishes  and 
dealing  out  pie,  coffee,  and  hash  to  rough-neck  soldiers.  She 
worked  harder  than  a  waitress  at  Childs',  but  she  lunched 
at  the  Plaza..  Now  she  and  Sergeant  April  Summerlin  were 
taking  their  ease  and  betraying  a  boyish  pride  in  smoking 
cigarettes  publicly,  between  courses.  They  made  a  com- 
ical-pathetical  effort  to  pretend  they  felt  no  bravado  in  this 
achievement,  though  they  could  see  that  several  old-fashioned 
persons  in  the  huge  room  were  fluttered  by  the  brazen  im 
morality  and  unwomanliness  of  it.  A  few  years  before,  the 
same  dear  old  souls  would  have  protested  to  the  waiter  if  a 
man  had  dared  to  light  a  cigar  in  their  environs.  Now  they 
could  only  moan:  "What's  the  world  coming  to?  And 
they  look  like  nice  girls,  too!" 

One  of  the  things  America  was  soon  coming  to  was  a  cru 
sade  against  tobacco  of  every  sort  for  everybody.  A  lady 
would  nominate  herself  for  the  Presidency  of  the  United 
States  on  a  one-plank  platform  of  tobacco  abolition.  In  Eng 
land  a  clergyman  at  the  Temple  would  be  asking  whether 
it  would  not  be  advisable  to  permit  men — and  women! — to 
smoke  in  church  cigars,  pipes,  or  cigarettes! 

The  Church  was  wondering  what  the  world  was  coming  to 
and  what  itself  was  coming  to.  One  thing  the  Church  was 
not  coming  to  was  an  agreement — except  upon  one  thing: 
that  people  were  not  coming  to  church. 

Some  of  the  churchmen  credited  the  war  with  a  great  re 
ligious  awakening,  some  with  a  great  religious  coma.  Some 
said,  "Millions  of  people  are  going  to  the  movies  of  Sunday 
nights;  let's  stop  the  movies,  so  that  the  audiences  will  have 

6 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

to  come  to  church."  Others  said,  "Let's  bring  the  movies 
to  the  church,  and  then  the  public  will  want  to  come  to 
church."  The  great  movie  master  David  Wark  Griffith 
was  invited  to  speak  to  the  Methodist  Convention  on  the 
subject. 

The  worst  of  the  religious  problem  was  its  contradictions. 
Nobody  could  deny  that  people  had  never  been  braver,  more 
generous,  more  unselfish,  more  untiring.  But  the  fear  of 
God  seemed  to  have  gone  out  of  the  world  with  the  fears  of 
hell,  death,  dirt,  and  indiscretion.  The  nicest  people  had 
moved  about  in  mud  and  filth  and  looked  with  indifference 
on  heaps  of  putrefying  dead. 

Hades  had  come  above  ground;  yet  people  flocked  into 
it  like  tourists — men,  women,  and  children  by  the  million 
had  crowded  into  the  torment,  unafraid,  enduring  all  the 
things  the  medieval  terrorists  put  into  hell  to  Gehennize 
people  into  being  good.  And  yet  people  went  on  being  just 
as  good  and  just  as  bad,  as  witty  or  morose,  as  gentle  and 
as  cruel,  as  before. 

For  ten  thousand  years  the  same  patterns  had  been  visible 
throughout  human  history  for  whoso  cared  to  read.  Some 
people  had  been  very  bad  at  times,  and  some  very  good  at 
times;  some  nations  had  had  streaks  of  nobility  and  then 
streaks  of  ferocity;  some  cycles  had  been  glorious  and  some 
shameful.  But  nobody  and  no  nation  and  no  period  had 
ever  failed  to  ride  the  seesaw. 

Yet  some  dear  souls  persist  in  thinking  that  what  they  call 
right  and  truth  will  some  day  permanently  disestablish 
what  they  call  wrong  and  error.  They  could  have  seen  their 
prototypes  making  the  same  beautiful  fools  of  themselves  in 
the  market-places  of  Assyria — if  they  could  have  looked  so 
far  back. 

They  loudly  proclaimed  now  that  there  must  be  no  more 
war,  that  mankind  must  bind  itself  together  in  an  indissoluble 
league  of  virtue  and  altruism.  They  disproved  their  own 
sweet  dreams  by  the  cruelty  of  their  slanders  against  the 
unbelievers  and  the  hangers-back  from  their  folly.  With 
"Love!"  on  their  banner,  they  hated  all  the  incredulous,  and 
trampled  them  under  with  the  ferocity  of  all  crusaders. 

In  the  meanwhile  1919  found  the  world  with  twenty-three 
wars  in  full  blast,  with  every  nation  distrusting  every  other, 

2  7 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

and  with  superstitions  of  the  most  primeval  sort  raging  in 
all  circles.  Scientists  and  peers  published  solemnly  their 
communications  with  the  dead;  a  preacher  in  New  York 
cured  the  sick  by  the  laying  on  of  hands,  or  said  so,  at  least; 
and  all  things  were  as  they  were  in  the  beginning  and  ap 
parently  ever  shall  be,  world  without  end,  alas! 


CHAPTER  II 

HPHOSE  who  came  out  of  the  Inferno  of  1914-18  seemed 
I  to  have  lost  the  fear  of  everything  else  as  well  as  of  death. 
Women  went  everywhere  dressed  in  men's  clothes  or  in 
shameless  silks.  Ladies  and  their  young  daughters  wandered 
into  battle  or  into  crowded  dance-halls  with  total  strangers 
in  the  utmost  promiscuity.  In  France,  American  girls  formed 
"flying  squadrons,"  pledged  to  dance  with  any  soldier  that 
asked  them  to.  Women  seemed  to  claim  all  the  privileges 
of  men,  including  heroism,  martyrdom,  self-sufficiency,  hard 
labor,  tobacco,  profanity,  infidelity,  politics,  finance,  ad 
ministration,  military  commissions,  crosses  of  war,  wounds, 
disobedience  of  parents,  scorn  of  conventions — what  not? 

April  and  Claudia,  who  "looked  like  nice  girls,  too,"  were 
nice  girls  as  girls  go.  And  girls  were  going  pretty  fast  in 
1918  and  1919.  The  war  had  turned  them  out-of-doors 
and  sent  them  whirling  at  such  a  pace  that  no  one  could  fore 
tell  just  where  they  would  fetch  up. 

The  window  beside  these  two  nice  girls  looked  out  on  the 
open  square  that  gave  the  hotel  its  name.  The  little  green 
oasis  of  former  years  had  been  recently  and  dubiously  im 
proved  by  a  fussy  clutter  of  columns,  urns,  benches,  barriers, 
and  platforms,  replacing  the  precious  napkin  of  grass  with 
more  of  the  too-much  stone.  The  hub  of  this  esplanade,  if 
"esplanade"  is  the  word,  was  the  broad  bowl  of  the  Fountain 
of  Abundance,  set  there  as  a  reminder  of  the  strenuous 
journalist  Joseph  Pulitzer. 

The  unhappy  architecture  was  redeemed  by  the  statue 
that  surmounted  it  all,  a  modern  statue,  yet  of  supreme  and 
classic  grace,  the  lithe  figure  of  a  beautiful  lady  chastely 
naked  and  stately,  holding  against  her  marble  left  hip  a  basket 
of  marble  fruit.  The  girls  idly  discussed  the  figure.  Claudia 
said: 

"You've  been  studying  sculpture,  April.    What  do  you 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

think  of  that  shameless  hussy  out  there?  Is  she  any  good? 
Who  did  her?" 

"I  don't  know  who  the  sculptor  is,  but  I  think  the  girl 
is  beautiful.  As  statuary  it's  right  nice." 

The  impersonal  note  suggested  the  personal,  and  Claudia 
asked : 

"What's  going  to  become  of  your  ambitions,  now  that 
you've  got  all  this  money?" 

"I  don't  know,"  April  sighed.  "I've  had  only  one  am 
bition  for  a  year,  and  that  was  to  get  across.  And  I  didn't, 
damn  it !  Any  other  ambition  seems  to  be  babyish.  We've 
just  taken  one  of  those  expensive  duplex  studios,  but  I 
don't  seem  to  want  to  work  any  more.  And  then  Bob 
will  be  a  problem — if  he  conies  back.  He  always  hated 
my  ambition.  It  shocked  him  to  have  me  studying 
*nudes." 

Claudia  smiled:  "His  stay  in  France  may  educate  him 
a  little." 

"It  may  educate  him  too  much." 

"He  got  part  of  the  Chatterson  money,  too,  didn't  he?" 

"Yes,  but  only  a  little.  That's  another  thing  that's  keep 
ing  me  awake  nights.  Bob  and  I  were  poor  Virginians  to 
gether,  getting  along  beautifully  except  for  an  occasional 
spat;  and  then  Uncle  Randolph  Chatterson  had  to  go  and 
die  and  leave  mamma  and  me  over  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars  and  poor  Bob  only  ten.  Bob's  so  proud — I  don't 
know  what  he'll  do. 

"I  wrote  him  all  about  it — didn't  dare  trust  the  letter  to 
the  mails;  they  never  get  them;  I  met  a  fellow  who  was 
going  over  for  the  *Y.'  He  promised  to  hunt  Bob  up.  I 
wonder  how  he'll  take  the  news — if  he  ever  gets  it. 

"It  simply  defeats  me.  I  never  knew  money  was  such  a 
nuisance.  Besides,  mamma  and  I  have  been  simply  pestered 
to  death  by  people  telling  us  how  to  invest  it,  and  all  I 
can  find  out  is  that  any  investment  that's  safe  doesn't  pro 
duce  anything  at  all,  and  anything  that  promises  anything 
risks  the  whole  amount.  Mamma  is  simply  unspeakable, 
and  unspeak-to-able.  I  wonder  who  did  that  statue?  It's 
really  perfectly  darn  splendid.  If  it  had  a  Greek  name, 
we'd  be  raving  over  it,  I  reckon." 

They  would  have  been  raving  over  it  in  another  sense  if 

10 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

they  had  known  that  its  maker  had  worn  an  Austrian  name.1 
Karl  Bitter  had  tried  to  live  down  his  Viennese  birth  and 
education  by  sailing  to  America  in  his  twenty-second  year 
and  becoming  an  American  citizen.  This  statue  of  his 
had  been  finished  in  innocence  of  the  war  and  set  up  during 
the  first  year  of  it. 

The  sculptor  had  died,  not  knowing  that  his  adopted 
country  would  enter  the  lists  and  help  to  wipe  the  very 
name  of  the  Austrian  Empire  from  the  map  it  had  troubled 
for  so  many  centuries.  But  people  almost  never  know  the 
names  of  sculptors,  and  this  statue  was  therefore  almost 
anonymous.  It  seemed  to  be  an  unconscious  prayer  for 
immortality;  and  if  to  labor  is  to  pray,  so  to  be  beautiful 
is  to  pray. 

The  nymph's  suavity  of  proportion  and  her  rhythm  of 
line  are  quite  miraculous,  but  the  triumph  of  her  creator 
is  in  the  lissome  attitude;  for  it  is  the  special  art  of  the 
sculptor  to  take  advantage  of  every  human  plane,  exploit 
every  contour,  and  give  each  articulation  its  felicitous  ex 
pression,  turning  every  member  at  every  joint  in  a  new  direc 
tion,  so  that  the  body  may  revel  in  all  its  privileges  of  motion 
or  of  gracefully  distributed  repose. 

Never  was  there  a  statue,  surely,  in  which,  without  affec 
tation  or  extravagance  of  posture,  the  sculptor  has  been 
inspired  to  contrive  a  torsion  so  versatile  yet  so  calm. 
She  stands  there  delicately  convolved  upon  the  axis  of 
herself,  enwrapped  spirally,  lily-wise,  in  her  own  loveliness; 
her  flesh  a  temple  of  reverie,  of  love,  of  all  the  beatific  moods 
in  the  sweet  sufficiency  of  being  exquisitely  alive. 

But  since  New  York  is  always  building  and  never  built, 
it  was  inevitable  that  this  accomplished  dream  should  be 
confronted  by  something  incomplete. 

The  nymph  of  plenty  faced  now  a  big  shed  housing  the 
machineries  with  which  engineers  were  driving  a  subway 
beneath  Fifty-ninth  Street  to  link  two  uptown  tunnels. 

This  shed  held  temporarily — a  very  protracted  tempo 
rarily — the  room  once  occupied,  and  some  day  to  be  re- 
occupied,  by  Saint-Gaudens's  majestic  status  of  a  gilded 
General  Sherman  seated  on  a  gilded  charger  led  forward 
by  a  gilded  Victory  bearing  a  gilded  palm  branch — what 
Henry  James  called  the  "golden  elegance,"  the  "dauntless 

ii 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

refinement"  that  "amuses  itself  with  being  as  extrava 
gantly  'intellectual'  as  it  likes." 

The  old  hero  of  the  March  to  the  Sea,  whose  aphorism, 
"War  is  hell,"  had  been  rendered  trivial  by  the  four  years 
of  carnage  in  Europe,  had  been  dragged  backward  up  Fifth 
Avenue  before  the  nymph  was  established  in  her  place.  He 
was  still  in  retreat  under  the  trees,  waiting  his  day  to  return 
to  his  post. 

The  girls  of  his  day  would  have  stared  in  equal  wonder 
at  the  lofty,  unashamed,  unclothed  nymph  and  at  the  1919 
girls.  Yet  the  girls  of  1861-65  accomplished  their  equal 
quota  of  evil. 

Claudia  wore  no  crinolines,  and  her  corsets  were  negligible, 
and  her  close  skirts,  gathered  under  her,  ended  at  her  knees; 
but  April's  garb  was  even  more  fashionable,  for  she  wore 
short,  buttoned  skirts  making  no  secret  of  the  breeches  be 
neath — also  puttees  and  a  very  masculine  belted  coat  and 
a  sort  of  overseas  cap. 

The  table-cloth  concealed  her  legs,  which  need  not  have 
feared  compare  with  the  nymph's  outside,  but  the  mascu 
linity  of  her  attire  was  betrayed  above  by  the  flaring  lapels, 
the  collar  and  neck-scarf,  and  by  the  cap  she  kept  on  her  head. 
There  is  nothing  more  feminine  than  what  is  known  as 
mannish,  as  there  is  nothing  less  womanly  than  what  is 
called  effeminate. 

It  would  have  been  hard  to  say  which  was  the  more  fem 
inine  of  the  two  girls.  The  words  "he,"  "him,"  and  "his" 
shuttled  through  their  conversation,  as  is  to  be  expected 
wherever  two  or  three  women  are  gathered  together.  They 
were  talking  of  their  lovers  and  loveds,  of  which  each  had 
several,  as  is  becoming  to  young  women  of  their  age  and 
charm,  and  at  a  time  when  men  in  millions  were  agonizing 
on  the  brink  of  death  far  from  their  homes. 

Like  a  very  lay  Sister  of  Charity,  Claudia  had  gone  about 
distributing  kisses  and  endearments,  and  even  engagements, 
to  as  many  heroes  as  she  had  time  for.  It  was  mighty  gen 
erous  of  her,  and  she  did  the  suffering  youth  a  power  of  good. 
Some  of  these  zealous  red-rose  nurses  gave  many  a  young 
hero  more  comfort  and  courage  than  any  of  the  orators  or 
surgeons,  by  the  simple  old  device  of  massaging  atrophied 
souls  and  bandaging  lonely  hearts.  Claudia  granted  the 

12 


THE    NYMPH   ALONE   WAS   UNPERTURBED 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

delicious  privilege  of  being  her  fiance"  to  at  least  three 
handsome  officers  who  never  lived  to  come  back  and  dis 
cover  her  amiable  perfidy.  But  Claudia  did  not  boast  of 
this  liberality. 

April  had  done  a  bit  of  consoling  on  her  own — before  Bob 
left  America.  In  one  of  their  quarrels  she  had  taken  up 
with  a  fierce  young  major  who  almost  got  her  married  to 
him  before  she  knew  it.  She  sent  Bob  a  telegram  of  noti 
fication,  and  he  pleaded  for  leave  of  absence  on  the  ground 
that  his  mother  was  ill,  and  came  up  from  Texas,  where  he 
was  flying,  just  in  time  to  stop  the  wedding.  He  tried  to 
get  April  to  marry  him  for  safe-keeping,  and  they  were 
actually  on  their  way  to  the  Municipal  Building  for  a  license 
when  he  said  some  wrong  thing,  and  she  got  off  at  the  next 
Subway  station  and  went  back  to  her  garage.  By  the  time 
Bob  had  found  her  and  appeased  her  the  license  bureau  was 
closed  and  he  had  to  take  his  train  back  to  Texas.  He  went 
to  France  on  good  terms  with  her,  and  she  had  kept  her 
troth  since — pretty  well. 

The  rest  of  the  company  in  the  Plaza  dining-room  to-day 
was  grave  enough,  for  the  times  were  grave. ,  A  number  of 
the  men  at  table  were  foreign. 

There  was  a  convention  in  the  hotel  that  day,  representing 
small  oppressed  peoples  who  had  suddenly  wakened  to  a  new 
hope  and  a  keener  sense  of  racial  unity:  Poles,  Czechs, 
Albanians,  Unredeemed  Greeks,  Zionists,  Ukrainians,  Slo 
venes,  Uhro-Ruhsins.  Professor  Masaryk  was  there  and 
Roman  Dmowski  and  Captain  Stoica  and  Mr.  Ben-Avi. 
Their  ambitions  conflicted  with  one  another  in  many  a 
detail.  The  Poles  had  withdrawn  from  the  mid-European 
Union,  and  the  Jugo-Slavs  would  follow,  but  they  all  hoped 
to  remodel  the  map  of  Europe  so  that  no  race  should  be 
oppressed  by  another.  Their  boundaries,  their  statistics, 
and  their  sacred  claims  were  in  hopeless  confusion,  but — 

Suddenly  April  exclaimed:  "Look!  Out  there  in  the 
fountain!" 

The  Plaza,  almost  empty  at  her  latest  glance,  was  now 
suddenly  peopled  with  a  boiling  mob.  In  the  bowl  of  the 
fountain  stood  a  foreign-looking  man  with  his  arm  about 
the  nymph,  who  alone  was  unperturbed.  The  man  was 
not  embracing  her  as  Praxiteles's  Venus  of  Knidos  had  been 

13 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

lovingly  entreated  long  ago.    He  was  using  her  for  support, 
oblivious  of  her  graces. 

Everybody  in  the  Plaza  was  keenly  excited.  A  surf  of 
cheers  began  and  persisted.  Automobiles  checked  by  the 
crowd  accumulated,  and  their  drivers  began  to  honk  their 
horns. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  tumult  invaded  the  dining-room,  where  silence  was 
a  religion.  It  seemed  to  seep  through  the  tall  windows 
and  fume  through  the  corridor  doors.  The  waiters,  hurrying 
in  with  their  dishes,  carried  as  upon  salvers  the  most  glorious 
tidings.  They  bent  and  whispered  to  their  clients.  April's 
waiter  had  gone  for  artichokes.  He  came  back  with  the 
marvelous  words: 

"The  armisteets  is  signed,  mees.  The  war  is  over,  mees, 
eef  you  pleass." 

This  was  unbelievably  beautiful,  after  four  years  of  in 
creasing  ravage.  Peace  struck  the  world  as  with  a  lightning 
and  rain  on  a  suffocating  midnight.  Thunders  of  love, 
mellow  and  sonorous,  rolled  round  the  globe. 

Later  the  rumor  would  be  called  "the  false  armistice." 
But  even  false  news  was  welcome  when  it  was  so  good. 
And  besides,  everybody  knew  that  peace  was  imminent, 
and  hearts  were  ready  for  the  first  pretext  to  cast  off  a  uni 
versal  mourning  so  prolonged  and  so  profound  that  its  hor 
ror  was  only  understood  when  it  was  at  end. 

Tears  gushed  from  April's  eyes  and  from  Claudia's.  Their 
hearts  broke  with  very  bliss. 

When  peace  came  finally,  everybody  would  find  that  it 
brought  no  millennium.  The  nations  had  been  held  together 
in  a  kind  of  close  and  wonderful  unity  by  the  iron  hoops  of 
war.  Now  that  the  hoops  were  struck  off,  they  would  break 
apart  like  barrels  sent  rolling  downhill,  and  evils  forgotten 
and  rotten  would  spill  out  to  offend  the  feet  and  the  nostrils. 
Souls  would  be  sent  flying  in  all  directions,  and  a  hopeless 
task  would  confront  assiduous  persons  who  would  try  to 
gather  them  together  into  a  great  new  tun  to  be  called  the 
League  of  Nations. 

But  these  and  many  other  bitter  truths  were  for  the 
morrow's  supply.  The  garbage  of  history  was  not  yet  dis- 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

closed.  The  wedding-feast  was  served,  and  the  whole  world 
invited  to  celebrate  the  salvation  of  millions  of  lives — 
temporarily;  for,  after  all,  though  people  forgot  it  for  the 
nonce,  everybody  would  go  right  on  dying,  and  many  who 
might  have  perished  in  splendid  instants  would  be  saved 
for  sickening  conclusions  of  slow  torment  or  disgrace;  many, 
indeed,  would  be  killed  by  accidents  and  in  street  fights 
who  might  have  survived  the  barrages  of  shell  and  lived 
long. 

April  did  not  look  too  far  ahead,  being  wise.  The  rescue 
of  the  countless  hosts  meant  chiefly  to  her  the  rescue  of  her 
one  man.  She  gasped: 

"Oh,  now  Bob  won't  have  to  die!"  ' 

Claudia  thought  of  her  three  betrotheds.  She  had  not 
focused  her  eyes  as  yet  on  one  object.  They  filled  with 
tears,  and  she  sobbed: 

"And  neither  will  Phil — and  Jack — and  Harry." 
<  The  girls'  hands  ran  to  each  other  across  the  table-cloth 
and  clenched.     They  had  lived  to  witness  a  universal  re 
prieve,  the  world's  release  from  damnation.     April  said, 
with  sublime  simplicity: 

"I  couldn't  eat  any  more  lunch,  to  save  me — not  now!" 

"Me,  neither,"  said  Claudia. 

It  seemed  a  pity  to  waste  those  artichokes,  huge  green 
boiled  roses  with  a  golden  sauce  at  hand.  But  some  tribute 
had  to  be  paid  to  the  noble  occasion.  The  girls  felt  that  it 
would  be  unpoetic  to  eat. 

When  people  would  rejoice,  they  feel  that  they  must 
squander  something.  So  the  world  proceeded  to  play  the 
sailor  ashore  after  a  long,  rough  voyage.  Nearly  every 
body  got  drunk  on  one  beverage  or  another.  Ice-water 
proved  as  intoxicating  as  gin.  The  open  air,  the  ferment 
of  rejoicing  mobs,  the  noise  of  cheers,  the  uproar  of  motor- 
horns,  the  mere  commotion  of  throngs  in  restless  movement 
— everything  and  everybody  seemed  inebriated  and  inebri 
ating.  Everybody  went  everywhere  just  to  look  at  every 
body  else. 

April  and  Claudia  made  only  a  brief  quarrel  over  the 
paying  of  the  bill  for  the  lunch.  April  won  and  gave  the 
waiter  a  quarter  above  the  appropriate  tip,  so  that  he  would 
remember  the  big  day.  In  the  lobby  they  bought  news- 

16 


APRIL  S   WAITER   CAME    BACK    WITH    MARVELOUS   WORDS 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

papers.  In  the  streets  newsboys  scudded  like  hornets  blown 
about  by  a  great  wind.  The  boys  could  hardly  afford  to 
stop  to  collect  the  fares  for  their  papers.  Men  and  women 
snatched  at  sheets  and  paid  the  first  coin  they  found, 
'Ivithout  troubling  about  change. 

When  the  girls  pushed  through  the  agitation  in  the  lobby, 
they  found  the  Plaza  outside  a  mass  of  clotted  humanity. 
Motor-cars  moved  like  molasses.  The  bowl  of  the  Fountain 
of  Abundance  was  as  crowded  as  a  six-o'clock  street-car 
with  "standees." 

April  and  Claudia  submerged  themselves  in  the  mass, 
two  atoms  making  one  molecule  in  the  body  politic.  There 
was  a  kind  of  pantheism  about  it.  They  wanted  to  be  "in 
tune  with  the  Infinite,"  at  one  with  the  One,  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing. 

In  the  jostling,  squeezing,  crushing  stream  they  laughed 
with  cosmic  laughter.  Familiarities  that  would  have  been 
horrifying  in  old  friends  were  forgiven  to  passing  strangers. 
This  was  the  democracy  of  the  Saturnalia.  Womankind, 
having  claimed  and  received  the  privilege  of  voting  and 
working  in  equality  with  men,  felt  obliged  to  share  the  holi 
day  and  the  good-fellowship  and  turn  everything  upside 
down.  Sanity  was  insane  on  such  a  day.  Dignity  was 
almost  obscene. 

By  some  mystic  agreement  people  in  all  the  cities  began 
to  do  a  new  thing,  to  empty  waste-baskets  of  paper  from 
windo\rs,  to  tear  up  newspapers,  wrapping-paper,  any  paper, 
and  cast  it  into  the  air  to  serve  as  confetti.  In  some  of  the 
streets  the  pavements  were  ankle-deep  in  such  rubbish. 
Chicago  looked  as  if  a  blizzard  had  enveloped  it. 

April  and  Claudia  trudged  down  Fifth  Avenue,  giggling, 
hurrahing,  shrieking  with  the  shopgirls  and  the  factory- 
hands  from  the  abandoned  trades  and  industries.  They 
met  friends  and  embraced.  Rich,  poor,  middlings,  soldiers, 
sailors,  marines,  anarchists,  capitalists  mingled.  Strange 
creatures  came  forth  as  from  dens,  crazy-looking  people, 
fanatics  of  all  sorts,  in  wild  garbs. 

It  took  an  hour  to  creep  from  Fifty-ninth  Street  to  Forty- 
second.  Here  the  mob  was  too  dense  to  penetrate.  The  girls 
turned  west  on  Forty-third  to  Sixth  Avenue  and  down  to 
Forty-second  and  so  westered  to  Times  Square.  Here  was 

17 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

another  vast  quivering  jelly  of  men,  women,  street-cars, 
taxicabs,  trucks,  limousines,  delivery  wagons. 

High  above  this  coagulation,  in  a  balcony  of  the  Knicker 
bocker  Hotel,  stood  the  great  Caruso,  scattering  roses  upon 
the  air  as  fast  as  they  could  be  passed  to  him.  And  now 
and  then  he  squandered  a  few  still  more  precious  notes  of 
peerless  song.  That  was  his  way  of  playing  the  spendthrift. 

April  and  Claudia  tried  to  slide  into  the  hotel  to  telephone 
to  their  homes  that  they  were  alive  and  happy.  When  at 
last  they  had  oozed  to  the  booths,  service  was  refused  them. 
Most  of  the  telephone  force  was  on  a  joy-strike,  too,  and 
only  messages  of  vital  importance  were  accepted  by  the 
faithful  remnant. 

April  and  Claudia  went  back  to  the  chaos.  Their  clasped 
hands  were  torn  apart  in  the  backwash  from  a  rush  of  sing 
ing  soldiers  splitting  the  crowds  regardless.  The  girls  could 
not  rediscover  each  other. 

April  set  out  for  home,  up  Broadway.  Time  and  again 
the  breath  was  pressed  out  of  her.  Time  and  again  her  soft 
body  was  ground  between  the  bodies  of  rough  men  as  be 
tween  the  cylinders  of  a  clothes-wringer.  She  wondered 
that  she  was  not  flattened  out  permanently. 

Many  times  she  gasped  with  pain  or  squealed  in  a  fear 
of  swooning.  Once  a  big  soldier  braced  himself  against 
his  neighbors  and  forced  a  little  space  for  her  between  his 
arms.  Noting  her  mannish  clothes,  he  laughed,  "Come 
along,  brother." 

As  April  thanked  him  and  slipped  through,  he  collected 
the  toll  of  a  quick  kiss.  She  would  have  struck  him  in  her 
rage,  but  she  could  not  get  her  hands  up,  and  she  could 
only  waste  a  glare  on  his  downward  grin. 

She  reached  her  home  at  last,  and  the  hall-man's  first 
glance  gave  him  a  suspicion  that  she  had  celebrated  with 
more  zeal  than  discretion.  She  had  to  wait  for  the  elevator, 
and  when  it  arrived  it  brought  down  an  elderly  negro  with 
a  complicated  apparatus  for  vacuum-cleaning.  The  darky 
elevator-boy  had  an  intuition  that  he  ought  to  explain 
the  situation  to  a  Southern  lady  kept  waiting  to  step  into 
a  car  occupied  by  a  negro  passenger. 

"Shame  to  keep  you  waitin',  Miss  Summalin,  but  freight- 
elevata-boy  run  off  this  aftanewn  to  jine  the  celibation.  I 

18 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

nachally  had  to  bring  Pafessa  Taxta  daown  in  this  yeah 
caw." 

April  was  startled  at  hearing  Bob's  name  applied  to  so 
unlike  a  person.  Professor  Taxter  was  having  trouble  with 
the  squirming  hose  and  the  long  nozle  of  his  contraption, 
and  he  gave  a  burlesque  of  Laocoon  and  his  serpents  until 
April,  with  a  sudden  tenderness  for  an  aged  negro,  lent  a 
hand  to  extricate  him. 

The  old  man's  slave  psychology  was  horrified  at  putting 
a  lady  of  evident  quality  to  the  trouble  of  saving  his  worth 
less  life.  His  face  glowed  with  a  charcoal  blush,  and  he 
wiped  his  hat  off  his  mossy  poll  to  mingle  apologies  with 
thanks. 

"Ah'm  sah-y  to  desecrate  yo'  convenience,  missy;  but 
Ah'll  be  out  yo'  way  in  one  little  minute." 

"All  right,  Uncle,"  said  April,  with  the  smile  one  grants 
a  stray  hound. 

The  word  "Uncle"  seemed  to  delight  the  old  man.  His 
eyelids  shivered  and  his  eyeballs  rolled  white.  His  fat 
mouth  seemed  to  quiver,  too,  for  words.  But  they  did  not 
come — only  a  chuckle  like  the  glug  of  liquid  from  a  bottle 
sounded  in  his  throat.  He  was  still  glugging  when  April 
stepped  into  the  elevator,  and  his  eyes  followed  her  up  as 
if  she  were  an  angel  in  translation.  April  said  to  the  boy: 

"Did  you  call  that  old  nigro  'Taxter' ?" 

"Yassum." 

4 '  Who  is  he  ?    What  does  he  do  ?" 

"He's  a  pafessa  of  vacuam-cleanin',  ma'am.  He's  been 
wukkin'  along  this  street  for  a  yeah  or  tew.  Yassum. 
If  you-all  was  to  want  any  vacuam-cleanin'  did,  he'd  be 
glad  to  git  it  to  dew." 

"We  might.    I'll  let  you  know." 

"If  you  forgit  his  name — " 

"I  won't,"  laughed  April. 

She  was  likely  to  forget  the  name  of  Taxter!  She  was 
still  laughing  at  the  contrast  between  the  winged  Apollo  she 
had  been  thinking  of  so  ardently  all  afternoon  and  the 
stumblesome  old  black  dotard  who  wore  the  same  name. 

If  any  one  had  told  her  that  the  day  would  come  when 
the  shuffling  dodderer  would  wind  the  cloud-piercing  youth 
in  the  coils  of  his  hose  and  thwart  him  for  his  own  good  with 

19 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

a  tyrannic  benevolence,  April  would  have  mocked  at  the 
fantastic  conceit.  But  since  the  mouse  terrifies  the  elephant 
in  fact,  and  in  fable  releases  the  lion,  why  might  not  the 
clumsy  buzzard  gain  sway  over  the  battle-falcon  that 
wheeled  in  air  above  the  reach  of  cannon? 

Without  quite  knowing  it,  Professor  Taxter  was  hunting 
for  Bob,  and  his  conquest  over  him  would  be  more  lasting 
than  that  of  the  German  airmen  who  had  that  very  day 
flung  Bob  out  of  the  sky  in  a  desperate  battle. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WHEN  April  reached  her  own  apartment  and  set  her 
latchkey  to  the  lock,  the  door  opened  before  she 
could  turn  the  key,  and  she  was  «o»fronted  by  a  withered 
little  negress  bound  in  a  hide  like  a  worn  russet  shoe. 

"Hello,  Pansy!"  said  April. 

"Hello?"  Pansy  scolded.  "It's  hah  tahm  you  was  helloin' ! 
Yo'  po'  maw  and  me  just  abote  gin  you  up  for  daid.  Whah 
you  been  at,  all  this  livelong  day?  Gittin'  yo'se'f  killed  or 
sumpin'  in  dat  old  amb'lansh?" 

"No.    I've  been  celebrating  the  end  of  the  war." 

"Eend  of  de  waw?  Is  dis  yeah  ol'  waw  done  come  to 
its  senses?  It's  hah  tahm,  says  I,  hah  tahm!" 

April  strode  past,  tossing  her  cap  on  the  console  and 
walking  into  a  great  room  as  tall  as  a  chapel,  with  a  little 
gallery  at  one  end. 

"Hello,  Mummsy!"  she  said,  going  to  the  desk  where 
her  mother  sat  immersed  in  heaps  of  letters. 

"Hello,  honey!    What  kept  you  so  late?" 

"Haven't  you  been  out  to  see?" 

"No,  I've  sat  here  toiling  over  these  awful  letters  all  afta- 
newn.  I'm  almost  distracted  trying  to  select  a  place  to  put 
our  hateful  money.  I  almost  wish  we'd  never  heard  of  it." 

April  kissed  her,  back  of  the  ear  among  the  little  white 
curls  that  clustered  there,  and  wrapped  warm  arms  about 
her,  and  spoke  in  a  voice  whose  strong  Virginianity  had  been 
a  little  modified  by  her  New  York  experience. 

"Forget  the  old  money  for  a  while,  M-immsy.  On  a  day 
like  this  you  oughtn't  to  think  of  money." 

"What  day  is  to-day?    It  isn't  Sunday,  I  know." 

"It's  the  Sabbath  of.  the  world.    The  war  is  over!"* 

"No!" 

"Yes!" 

Mrs.  Summerlin's  little  body  ached  from  the  thumping 
of  her  big  heart.  She  had  been  a  wee  girl  when  Lee  surren- 

21 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

dered  to  Grant  at  Appomattox,  not  far  from  her  own  ob 
literated  home,  and  she  had  been  glad  even  then  of  peace, 
even  of  such  a  peace  as  the  shattered  South  received  with 
its  Lost  Cause.  But  this  peace  meant  Victory  as  well  as 
the  cessation  of  destruction;  and  the  bravery  that  had  sus 
tained  her  through  the  danger  abandoned  her,  now  that  the 
danger  was  over.  She  wept  bountifully  in  the  arms  of  the 
strong  young  daughter  in  the  mannish  clothes.  April  was 
amazed  that  the  news  had  not  yet  reached  this  calm  lagoon. 

While  she  patted  her  mother's  back  as  one  comforts  a 
weeping  child,  she  saw  across  one  shaken  shoulder  in  a  cor 
ner  a  group  of  her  efforts  at  sculpture,  finished  studies  that 
had  been  cast  in  plaster;  lumps  of  plasticene,  neglected  tools, 
and  one  ambitious  clay  bust  that  had  been  left  unwatered 
till  it  dried  and  cracked  hideously. 

April  had  been  willing  to  sacrifice  her  art  for  her  country 
and  for  the  privilege  of  being  a  military  chauffeuse  running 
errands  of  all  kinds  about  town.  But  now,  all  of  a  sudden, 
Desdemona's  occupation  was  gone.  Her  sculpture  beckoned 
to  her  again.  Pondering  her  figurines  studied  from  living 
models  unclothed,  she  remembered  Bob's  inability  to  see 
anything  but  shocking  indecency  in  them. 

She  had  taken  up  art  as  an  escape  from  what  she  called 
poverty  and  idleness.  She  had  heard  of  sculptresses  who 
earned  munificent  sums  for  portraits,  fountains,  and  other 
odd  jobs.  The  poverty  was  ended,  but  the  idleness  con 
fronted  her.  Art  was  a  nice  business  for  a  woman,  and 
while  April  was  proud  to  sacrifice  it  for  war,  she  wondered 
if  she  ought  to  sacrifice  it  for  the  whim  of  one  narrow- 
minded  lover.  Now  that  Bob  was  to  escape  from  the  war 
alive,  he  had  become  unsanctified.  A  hero  demobilized  is 
a  particularly  plain  citizen. 

Her  mother  was  evidently  musing  on  Bob,  too,  for  sud 
denly  she  stopped  crying  and  began  to  laugh  hysterically. 

"This  means  that  Bob  will  come  home!  Isn't  it  Heaven's 
own  mercy!"  She  paused,  having  learned  that  Heaven's 
own  mercy  was  uncertain.  "Unless  he's  been  shot  down 
by  some  of  those  beasts.  He  might  have  been  killed  a  month 
ago  and  we'd  not  hear.  But  if  Bob  comes  back,  everything 
will  be  perfect,  won't  it?" 

April  groaned,  "Oh  yes,  yes!"    But  she  wondered. 

22 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

The  next  morning's  papers  unanimously  announced  that 
the  armistice  had  not  been  signed,  and  denounced  the  news 
agency  that  had  published  what  it  had  received  as  authori 
tative  gospel. 

The  official  word  of  the  armistice  reached  America  at 
midnight  of  the  third  day.  April  was  wakened  at  dawn  by 
the  noise  of  whistles  and  sirens  from  the  Hudson  River. 
Her  drowsy  eyes  saw  paper  already  falling  through  the  air 
from  windows  above.  The  revel  had  begun  anew.  It  raged 
all  day  and  all  night  with  greater  intensity  than  before. 

When  April  had  dressed  and  compelled  the  grumbling 
Pansy  to  give  her  an  early  breakfast,  she  read  in  the  morning 
paper  that  the  war  was  officially  dead.  She  telephoned 
Claudia  and  found  her  ready  and  willing  to  undertake  a 
new  foray.  The  whole  populace  was  once  more  pouring  into 
the  streets  in  a  panic  as  if  an  earthquake  threatened  to  shake 
the  buildings  down. 

The  two  girls  wandered  Fifth  Avenue  once  more,  kicking 
their  feet  through  the  clutter  of  paper  with  the  pleasant 
rustle  of  a  walk  through  autumn  leaves.  The  carnival  was 
increasing  swiftly  in  pace  and  volume,  in  the  overpowering 
crescendo  of  a  titanic  symphony.  Many  patriots  were  getting 
drunk  betimes. 

A  truck-load  of  soldiers,  sailors,  and  cases  of  beer  rolled 
up  the  Avenue.  All  the  young  men  were  at  least  tipsy 
already.  One  of  them  proffered  a  bottle  to  April  and  shouted 
at  her  like  a  young  Gambrinus.  He  was  whisked  out  of 
her  sight  before  she  could  decide  whether  she  ought  to  be 
a  prude  and  rebuke  him  with  a  snub  or  be  a  patriot  and  a 
good  sport  and  spend  a  smile  on  him.  She  did  not  even 
recognize  him  as  the  fellow  who  had  kissed  her  three  days 
before. 

She  never  quite  forgot  the  incident,  because  it  saddened 
her  to  observe  the  complete  slump  of  all  these  fearless  young 
zealots  into  blatant  young  sots.  Later,  Joe  Yarmy  would 
ride  through  her  life  with  devastating  effect.  He  would  not 
greet  her  with  good  cheer,  nor  she  him.  They  would  meet 
as  instant  enemies,  but  with  no  memory  at  all  of  having 
ever  seen  each  other  on  this  day;  too  many  soldiers  hailed 
her  in  passing  and  Joe  Yarmy  hailed  too  many  girls  in  passing 
for  either's  face  to  be  impressed  upon  the  other's  mind. 

3  23 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Later  in  the  day  copious  alcohol  would  so  relax  Joe's 
eye  muscles  that  each  eye  would  register  its  own  visions  on 
his  sodden  brain  and  he  would  hail  twice  as  many  girls  as 
there  really  were. 

Citizens  and  barkeepers  would  treat  him  all  day  to  all  he 
could  drink.  All  the  multitudinous  soldiers  in  town  would 
be  subjected  to  every  form  of  ruinous  solicitation.  Thou 
sands  of  them  would  remember  their  dignity  and  their  duty 
to  their  uniform  and  be  no  more  hilarious  than  the  revel 
justified.  But  hundreds  would  lapse  into  blithering  stu 
pidity,  blind  wrath,  or  idiotic  recklessness. 

And  none  lapsed  farther  than  Joe  Yarmy.  He  lapsed  so 
far  that  his  trousers  also  lapsed,  until  he  lost  them  altogether 
in  some  mysterious  manner,  and  was  toted  for  a  block  or 
two,  bare-legged  and  horizontal,  by  a  quartet  of  reeling 
marines  who  had  found  him  playing  Noah  on  a  side-street 
stoop. 

April  and  Claudia  narrowly  escaped  encountering  this 
Bacchic  procession  as  they  struggled  up  Broadway  under 
the  escort  of  Claudia's  fourth -best  betrothed  and  her 
brother  Walter,  who  held  April's  nigh  arm  and  would  have 
clasped  her  other  if  she  had  not  cowed  him  with  her  protests. 
'He  was  very  fond  of  her  and  he  would  have  loved  her  well 
if  she  had  let  him.  He  was  a  well-balanced  soul,  too,  and  if 
she  could  only  have  loved  him,  they  would  have  led  a  well- 
balanced  life. 

But  Bob  Taxter  had  got  her  heart  in  the  grip  of  his  fierce 
hands  and  he  would  give  it  many  a  squeeze  and  many  a 
pang. 

Perhaps  April  would  have  been  more  amenable  to  Walter 
Reece's  wooing  if  she  could  have  seen  as  far  as  the  streets 
of  Paris  and  the  exceedingly  unconventional  doings  and 
goings-on  that  were  breaking  all  commandment-breaking 
records  even  there.  Paris  had  four  hours'  start  in  the 
hilarity  that  waits  for  nightfall,  and  by  the  time  New  York 
was  cranking  up  Paris  was  hitting  on  all  twelve  cylinders. 
But  April  could  not  see  that  far,  and  it  was  perhaps  as  well. 
By  midnight  she  was  so  footsore,  elbow-sore,  and  joy- 
fagged  that  she  had  to  have  refreshment. 

When  Walter  and  the  other  man  proposed  food,  they 
were  greeted  with  cheers.  But  it  was  one  thing  to  get  hun- 

24 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

gry  and  another  to  get  fed.  Restaurant  after  restaurant 
proved  unapproachable.  Guests  who  were  in  stayed  in, 
and  few  came  out  except  such  as  were  thrown  out  for  vio 
lating  even  the  rules  of  Saturnals. 

Eventually  these  beggars  in  velvet  found  an  opening  in 
an  Automat  restaurant.  Even  here  the  raid  had  been  so 
incessant  that  most  of  the  boxes  were  empty  and  the  nickels 
that  were  deposited  came  back  with  a  dismal  click. 

A  cup  of  coffee  apiece  and  the  last  run  of  pie  had  to  suffice 
the  roisterers,  and  there  were  not  chairs  enough  for  all. 
Claudia  and  April  sat,  and  the  young  men  sat  on  the  broad 
arms  of  the  chairs. 

Walter  Reece  tried  to  make  love  to  April,  but  the  prune 
pie  and  coffee  did  not  help  his  suit.  Yet  suddenly  April 
paused  with  fork  uplifted  and  gasped: 

"I  wonder  where  poor  Bob  is  now." 

"Well  may  you  wonder,"  said  Claudia,  cynically. 

April  thought  of  France  with  anxiety,  as  girls  of  other 
nations  do  when  their  men  are  there.  She  half  wondered 
if  she  would  rather  have  Bob  dead  or  disloyal.  She  shud 
dered  at  the  alternative,  and,  raising  her  coffee-cup,  said  a 
prayer  in  a  toast : 

"Here's  to  him,  anyhow!" 

At  that  moment  poor  Bob  was  not  quite  dead,  nor  yet 
quite  alive. 


CHAPTER  V 

WHEN  the  news  broke  that  the  war  of  wars  was  ended, 
young  Bob  Taxter  wept. 

Nearly  everybody  in  the  world  wept  on  that  day.  There 
was  hardly  a  dialect  that  was  not  wrung  to  eloquence  in 
the  universal  rapture.  But  there  was  only  one  universal 
language,  and  that  was  the  appearance  of  a  solution  of 
sodium  chlorid  on  the  eyelids  of  mankind. 

There  was  every  imaginable  motive  back  of  those  tears. 
This  good  soul  sobbed  out  of  a  holy  gratitude  that  men 
had  ceased  at  last  to  slaughter  men,  in  multitudes,  day  and 
night,  year  in,  year  out.  Another  cried  with  joy  because 
a  certain  soldier  was  now  removed  from  the  menace  of 
death.  A  third  because  a  certain  soldier  had  not  lived  until 
this  day.  These  wept  because  their  long  sufferings  had 
ended  in  triumph;  those  because,  for  all  their  struggles,  they 
were  beaten;  and  some  because  they  had  had  no  chance  to 
fight.  Millions  of  soldiers  and  sailors,  especially  in  America, 
had  given  themselves  to  months,  even  to  years,  of  training 
and  sacrifice  for  a  battle  that  ended  before  they  could  come 
up.  And  they  grieved  like  children  kept  home  from  a  prom 
ised  circus. 

The  story  was  told  that  Marshal  Foch,  the  supreme 
architect  of  victory,  also  wept,  and  wept  because  the  enemy, 
so  hostile  to  art  in  all  things,  would  not  wait  yet  a  few  days 
till  he  could  bring  off  the  tremendous  climax  he  had  planned 
for  the  perfection  of  his  monumental  victory.  His  cathedral 
must  live  forever  now  without  its  tower  and  its  rose-window. 

Young  Bob  Taxter  wept  like  Foch,  because  he,  too/found 
himself  with  an  unfinished  victory  on  his  hands.  In  fact, 
Bob's  victory  disgustingly  resembled  a  catastrophe. 

On  that  very  morning  this  intrepid  Virginian  had  climbed 
the  sky  of  France  with  a  small  squadron  of  fellow-falcons 
to  hurry  the  reeling  German  lines  from  defeat  to  disaster, 

26 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

from  confusion  to  chaos.  The  aviators  were  willing,  but 
their  machines  had  been  overworked  in  the  recent  sleepless 
pursuit,  and  one  by  one  the  planes  had  to  go  back,  leaving 
Bob  and  his  friend  Jimmy  Dryden,  the  ace  of  aces,  to  linger 
for  a  few  final  observations  and  the  nice  placing  of  their 
remaining  bombs. 

Suddenly  out  of  a  baby-pink  cloud  a  quintet  of  German 
Fokkers  plunged  for  Bob  and  Jim.  Bob  and  Jim  set  out  for 
home  with  great  enthusiasm,  at  a  speed  like  a  mocking 
laughter. 

But  Jim's  engine  began  to  lag.  Bob  could  have  got  away 
easily;  but  if  the  idea  came  to  him  he  cast  it  overboard 
and  faced  death  in  mid-sky  as  jauntily  as  if  he  were  riding 
a  Coney  Island  roller-coaster  for  fun.  He  slowed  down  to 
keep  Jim  company.  He  turned  about  and  fought  the  Ger 
man  five,  with  amazing  charges  and  retreats,  swerves,  dives, 
swoops,  feints,  pretended  collapses,  and  soaring  rushes  up  the 
blue  chute.  He  exulted  in  the  festival  like  a  seraphic  acrobat. 

He  sent  one  German,  blazing,  to  grass,  and  scared  another 
into  a  colic  of  engine  trouble. 

All  the  while  the  famous  Dryden,  infamously  humiliated, 
sweated  and  cursed  and  wallowed,  trying  to  keep  aloft  till 
he  could  clear  the  fighting-line.  He  would  never  have  made 
it  if  Bob  had  not  fenced  off  the  three  Germans  and  diverted 
them  to  chasing  him.  By  the  time  Dryden  was  safe  Bob 
was  miles  away  from  his  goal. 

He  barely  escaped  destruction  by  turning  a  monstrous 
somersault  from  the  clouds  to  the  treetops;  then  he  ducked 
under  his  lowest  foe  and  cut  for  home. 

The  Germans,  driven  back  by  the  French  anti-aircraft 
guns,  sent  Bob  a  farewell  volley.  As  luck  would  have  it, 
and  as  Bob  expressed  it,  they  shot  off  the  seat  of  his  pants. 
His  tailless  plane  landed  ignominiously  on  its  nose  in  a 
tiny  French  hamlet  recently  evacuated  by  the  pell-mell 
Huns.  Here  there  was  only  one  other  man,  an  old  man  with 
a  wooden  leg,  a  wooden  head,  and  not  the  faintest  mental 
or  mechanical  equipment  for  repairing  a  rudderless  airplane 
with  a  riddled  gasolene-tank. 

Bob's  first  act  on  reaching  terra  firmissima  was  to  disen 
tangle  himself  from  his  wreckage,  shake  his  fist  at  the  dwindling 
Huns,  and  waft  them  a  promise  to  give  them  hell  to-morrow. 

27 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

The  populace  of  the  village  came  swarming  out  to  him 
with  compliments  for  his  escape,  sympathy  for  his  bruises, 
and  the  amazing  news  that  the  war  was  over.  Bob's  French 
was  scanty,  but  he  made  out  that  the  guerre  was  finie.  He 
was  dazed  at  first;  then  he  dazed  the  chorus  of  merry  vil 
lagers  by  breaking  down  and  weeping  like  the  cub  he  was. 
He  had  no  thought  that  he  had  been  brave  to  the  uttermost 
with  a  celestial  valor.  He  thought  that  he  was  disgraced 
forever  and  had  ended  his  first  and  only  war  with  a  ridiculous 
bump.  The  French  peasants  had  had  four  years  of  this  glory 
and  had  been  fed  up  on  what  he  had  just  tasted.  They 
thought  him  even  madder  than  most  Americans. 

The  town's  one  old  man,  who  had  lost  a  leg  in  1870  and 
had  feared  that  the  sacred  Revenge  would  never  be  achieved, 
limped  out  now  to  confirm  the  almost  incredible  fact  that 
the  stupendous  German  dragon  was  fawning  at  the  feet  of 
the  Allies  and  begging  to  be  allowed  to  go  home  without 
further  wounds — contented  to  return  to  its  land  with  only 
its  wounds  and  its  debts  for  its  pains. 

Bob  watched  the  tearful  ecstasies  of  the  peasants  for  a 
while  and  slowly  understood  a  little  of  what  it  meant  to 
them.  He  pocketed  his  private  regret  for  future  considera 
tion,  and  contented  himself  with  howling  after  the  vanished 
German  planes: 

"I'll  get  you  in  the  next  war,  you  sons  of  Huns,  and  I 
hope  it  comes  soon!" 

The  Germans  could  not  hear,  and  the  French  could  not 
understand  these  most  reprehensible,  these  infinitely  naughty, 
remarks. 

Having  cleared  his  throat  of  his  black  prayer,  Bob  turned 
with  Virginian  courtesy  to  render  himself  agreeable  to  his 
hosts.  They  plainly  wanted  to  have  a  celebration,  and 
Bob  consented  to  make  one  of  the  two  available  men. 

He  found  that  he  had  more  French  than  he  thought  he 
had,  especially  as  the  peasants  spoke  slowly  from  limited 
vocabularies,  with  plenteous  gesticulation,  and  with  no 
prejudices  against  pointing,  or  even  shoving. 

Several  very  attractive  young  women  of  various  weights 
dragged  Bob  about,  gave  and  accepted  kisses  and  hugs  and 
shocked  nobody — least  of  all  Bob. 

It  was  doubtless  the  jolt  of  his  fall  that  sprained  his 

28 


MONEY  COMES   IN 

memory,  for  Bob  quite  forgot  that  he  had  a  perfectly  good 
and  beautiful  fiancee  at  home  in  America,  and  that  he  had 
pledged  a  thousand  guaranties  against  any  nonsense  with 
those  terrible  French  beauties. 

April,  like  the  average  American,  believed  that  all  French 
women  are  both  wickedly  beautiful  and  beautifully  wicked. 
The  sordid  truth  that  the  vast  majority  of  them  are  neither 
had  been  made  apparent  to  Bob.  But  in  any  case,  on  this 
day  the  whole  world,  having  suspended  the  horrors  of  vil 
lainy,  suspended  also  the  horrors  of  virtue;  and  all  respectables 
people  misbehaved  more  or  less  according  to  the  opportunity 
and  the  environment. 

Bob's  environment  was  very  tame  compared  to  what 
was  going  on  in  Paris,  London,  New  York,  Chicago,  Berlin, 
Rome,  Watertown,  Waterloo,  Ogdensburg,  Montigny,  Mar- 
lotte,  Castellamare,  Uskub,  Saloniki,  Keokuk,  Mount  Kisco, 
Los  Angeles,  Ladylove,  Prsasnysz,  Wloszczowa,  and  where 
not  in  the  gazetteer  from  Aaby,  Denmark,  to  Zwanzig, 
Missouri,  and  on  around  to  Aaby  again. 

When  Bob  fell  out  of  the  empyrean  into  the  armistice  he 
selected  a  hamlet  hardly  as  big  as  its  name,  Villeperdue-de- 
Rouergue.  It  had  been  hardly  more  than  a  ganglion  on 
one  of  the  poplar-lined  nerve-roads.  Now  the  poplars  were 
all  splinters,  and  the  ganglion  was  somewhat  scrambled. 
But  the  Germans  in  their  haste  had  neglected  the  little  church 
completely.  It  was  intact. 

The  bronze  bell  had  been  taken  down  one  night  and  hidden. 
It  was  dug  up  now  by  big-thewed  peasant  girls,  who  lugged 
it  up  to  the  tower  across  the  roof  which  almost  touched  the 
ground.  They  hung  it  in  place  and  set  it  to  yelping. 

There  was  no  priest  for  this  church.  Even  in  times  of 
peace  a  monthly  visitor  conducted  the  only  services  there 
were,  except  for  an  occasional  funeral  or  christening.  The 
big  little  bell  seemed  to  be  glad  that  it  had  not  been  absorbed 
into  a  German  cannon;  it  swung  its  skirts  and  danced  and 
sang.  When  the  tall  girls  wearied  of  ringing  it  or  preferred 
to  go  back  to  earth  and  swing  in  a  dance  with  Bob,  the 
children  scampered  up  the  church  roof  and  kept  the  welkin 
clamorous. 

Bob  danced  and  marched.  He  sang  American  songs, 
joined  in  the  "Marseillaise,"  led  "The  Star-spangled  Ban- 

29 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

ner,"  drank  wine  from  many  a  glass,  hugged  the  old  ladies, 
gave  the  babies  flights  in  air,  and  squandered  his  soul  and 
body  in  the  jubilee.  When  he  fell  at  last  into  the  bed  pro 
vided  for  him  he  was  as  empty  of  every  emotion  as  the 
drained  gasolene-tank  of  his  airship. 

The  world  had  grown  so  used  to  war  as  an  every-day 
business  that  peace  seemed  incredible.  With  the  fatigue 
of  joy  came  anxiety.  People  realized  vaguely  that  peace 
would  propound  a  throng  of  riddles,  would  disorganize  every 
institution.  The  war,  like  a  suddenly  started  train,  had 
knocked  the  peoples  off  their  feet  and  sent  everything  away; 
gradually  a  kind  of  order  had  been  established;  and  now 
peace,  jamming  down  the  brakes,  would  fling  everything 
about  again. 

And  yet  the  one  sublimely  beautiful  truth  remained, 
that  suddenly  people  had  stopped  killing  one  another. 
Some  sweet  souls,  who  kept  their  ideals  unsullied  by  fact  or 
experience,  declared  that  this  was  the  end  of  war,  and  that 
men  would  never  fight  again,  provided  certain  satisfactory 
arrangements  were  made.  They  would  soon  set  about  mak 
ing  those  arrangements  and  would  find  themselves  in  con 
siderable  embarrassment.  But  it  was  enough  that  for  the 
moment,  for  the  day,  this  week,  for  a  year,  perhaps,  people 
should  stop  killing  one  another;  that  fathers,  husbands, 
sons  and  brothers  and  sweethearts  would  come  back  to  their 
women  and  homes  be  homes  once  more. 

When  Bob  woke  the  next  morning  he  learned  that  the 
news  of  peace  was  officially  denied.  He  was  refreshed 
enough  to  rejoice  in  the  hope  of  one  more  chance  at  the 
Boche. 

He  was  in  a  blaze  of  ambition  for  one  last  grand  sky- 
spree.  He  needed  only  an  airplane.  In  the  condition  of 
the  roads,  the  shortest  way  back  to  the  line  was  via  Paris. 
He  set  out  thither  on  foot,  by  ox-wagon,  ambulance,  any 
vehicle  that  would  advance  him  on  his  way.  He  reached 
Paris  on  the  third  day,  just  in  time  for  the  official  news  of 
the  armistice.  The  false  rumor  had  seemed  to  exhaust  the 
human  powers  of  celebration,  but  it  proved  to  be  only  a 
tame  rehearsal. 

These  pages  must  remain  as  blank  of  those  festivities  as 
Bob's  memory  was  the  next  afternoon  when  he  woke  up  with 

30 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

nothing  in  his  head  but  a  torture  of  pain,  mitigated  by  the 
feeling  that  it  was  cheap  at  the  price  and  the  only  proper 
condition  for  any  self-respecting  lover  of  mankind  and  peace. 
His  lips  had  kissed  the  cheeks  of  more  lasses  than  he  could 
number,  and  the  brims  of  far  more  glasses. 

And  now  that  the  war  was  over  and  the  celebration  was 
over  he  wanted  to  go  home.  That  was  the  cry  in  millions 
on  millions  of  hearts. 

"I  want  to  go  home!"  A  cyclonic  nostalgia  stormed  the 
world.  The  Americans  overseas  were  prostrated  by  it, 
hysterical  with  it.  The  long  habit  of  discipline,  the  strict 
shackles  of  military  organization,  could  hardly  keep  the 
soldiers  or  even  the  officers  in  hand.  The  howl  now  was  for 
ships  to  go  back  on,  as  the  howl  had  been  for  ships  to  get 
out  on. 

Bob  was  supposed  to  report  at  once  to  his  superiors. 
But  he  met  Jimmy  Dryden  in  Paris,  and  Jimmy  hailed  him 
as  a  ghost.  It  had  been  supposed  that  Bob  had  perished  in 
his  fallen  ship.  He  had  been  recorded  as  "missing." 

"I  couldn't  think  of  calling  the  record  a  liar,"  said  Bob. 
"I'll  just  stay  missing  awhile.  I  don't  know  when  I'll  ever 
see  this  Paris  town  again.  I'd  better  have  a  look  at  the — 
er — art-galleries  an'  everything." 

"I'll  help  you  look,"  said  Jimmy.  "We'll  see  if  we  can't 
leave  a  little  dent  in  this  fair  burg  to  remember  us  by." 

They  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  Everything,  but  not  much 
of  the  art-galleries.  The  trouble  with  the  art-galleries  was 
that  they  opened  so  early  and  closed  so  early,  while  Every 
thing  opened  so  late  and  closed  so  late.  When  Bob  and  Jim 
rolled  into  such  lodgings  as  they  had  found  there  was  some 
sleeping  to  do.  Getting  to  bed  at  five  and  getting  up  even 
so  promptly  as  eight  hours  later  brought  breakfast  and 
luncheon  into  collision. 

The  streets  were  full  of  interesting  friends  and  of  strangers 
willing  to  be  friends,  and  by  the  time  Bob  and  Jim  reached 
the  Louvre  or  the  Luxembourg  or  the  Panthdon  it  was  always 
just  closing.  They  found  the  grim  word  Fermt'on  all  the 
improving  doors,  while  all  the  others  were  hospitably  wide. 

Besides,  one  had  to  step  carefully  in  Paris.  The  city  was 
infested  with  military  police  in  American  uniforms.  They 
had  a  most  embarrassing  habit  of  stopping  officers,  even — 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

officers  especially — and  demanding  a  glimpse  of  passes.  Of 
ficers  who  had  unfortunately  left  their  passes  on  the  piano 
were  rudely  arrested  as  absent  without  leave,  and  shipped 
back  to  their  units  for  punishment.  There  were  at  least 
two  thousand  of  these  truant  heroes  loose  in  Paris. 

Bob  and  Jim  marched  past  the  M.P.'s  with  all  the  business 
like  dignity  they  could  muster,  trying  to  look  as  un-A.  W. 
O.  L.  as  possible.  They  bluffed  it  through  till  one  sad  night, 
and  then — 

It  was  all  the  Germans'  fault,  as  usual,  for  having  with 
drawn  from  business  so  hastily  that  they  left  the  Allies 
nobody  to  fight  but  one  another.  The  Americans  particularly 
were  choked  with  unexpended  energy.  They  were  not  satis 
fied  that  they  had  convinced  the  world,  or  themselves,  of 
their  unequaled  prowess.  They  resented  the  tardiness  of 
their  arrival  on  the  firing-line.  Some  of  the  Allies  reminded 
them  of  it  now  and  then.  For  their  own  souls'  sakes,  and 
to  keep  down  any  temptation  toward  unseemly  pride,  they 
reminded  the  Americans  of  the  fact  that  their  equipment 
however  magnificent,  was  still  in  America  for  the  most  part, 
and  that  they  had  fought  with  borrowed  material. 

Some  American  officers  made  themselves  a  nuisance  in 
Paris  with  their  belated  belligerence.  Many  Americans 
high  enough  up  to  be  aloof  from  lowlier  irritations  regretted 
the  swagger  of  their  fellow-countrymen  and  neglected  no 
device  for  muffling  -the  screams  of  the  Eagle.  The  M.P.'s 
were  instructed  to  enter  into  any  affray  where  American 
soldiers  were  engaged  and  attack — not  the  enemy,  but  the 
Americans.  A  great  body  of  them,  indeed,  was  specially 
drilled  in  rough-house  tactics  on  a  race-track  outside  Paris 
for  the  one  purpose  of  suppressing  Americans.  This  was 
most  depressing  strategy,  a  loathsomely  ingenious  method 
of  persuading  American  officers  that  fighting  was  out  of 
fashion.  It  was  very  tough  for  the  officers,  since  they  were 
generally  handicapped  by  liquor,  while  the  M.P.'s  fought 
on  dry  ground.  It  was  poor  Bob's  misfortune  to  learn  of 
this  new  order  first,  by  way  of  its  practical  demonstration. 


CHAPTER  VI 

'  A  FTER  a  night  begun  at  a  revue,  continued  at  a  bal,  and 
/x  finished  at  a  cafe,  Monsieur  Bob  went  to  his  lit  reason 
ably  tot  in  the  matin.  He  woke  somewhat  befuddled  in  the 
afternoon  and  found  a  letter  on  the  floor.  He  could  not 
imagine  how  he  had  received  it.  His  memory  had  quite 
lost  the  fact  that  a  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man  had  met  him  reeling 
along  the  street,  recognized  him,  and  given  him  the  letter, 
explaining  that  April  had  asked  him  to  deliver  it  in  person. 
Bob  had  thanked  him,  vainly  urged  him  to  have  a  drink, 
pocketed  the  letter  and  forgotten  it.  It  had  fallen  out  of 
his  coat  and  stared  at  him  now  in  white  reproach. 

Seeing  that  it  was  from  April,  he  felt  unworthy  to  open 
it.  He  had  at  least  the  decency  to  hunt  down  the  raincoat 
that  served  for  a  bathrobe  and  gather  it  about  him  in  a  chair 
before  he  invaded  the  envelop. 

He  kissed  the  superscription,  "Bob  darling!"  with  rever 
ent  lips  and  proceeded  to  read: 

BOB  DARLING: 

Before  I  tell  you  how  much  I  love  you  and  miss  you  and  how  fearful 
I  am  that  you  may  never  live  to  read  this,  let  me  tell  you  the  wonderful 
news.  You  are  now  a  rich  man.  Our  great-uncle  Chatterson  died  last 
week  and  left  you  ten  thousand  dollars.  The  cash  is  waiting  for  your 
return.  I  wish  it  were  a  million,  but  I  reckon  you'll  be  glad  enough 
to  get  even  a  mere  ten  thousand.  It  would  have  seemed  like  all  the 
money  in  the  world,  a  little  while  ago,  wouldn't  it,  darling? 

Bob  emitted  a  war-whoop  and  executed  a  scalp-dance. 
He  had  more  joy  than  he  could  handle.  He  had  to  dump 
part  of  the  burden  on  somebody  else. 

He  dashed  across  the  hall  to  Jimmy  Dryden's  room  and 
found  the  illustrious  ace  in  a  state  of  sleep  as  profound  as 
that  of  Icarus  when  he  landed  from  the  first  of  all  flights. 
Bob  restored  him  to  life  with  no  undue  delicacy  and  suc- 

33 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

ceeded  at  last  in  boring  the  great  news  through  Dryden's 
fuddle.  Dryden  gaped  his  congratulations  and  tried  to 
return  to  his  pillow.  But  Bob  was  garrulous. 

"If  you  knew  what  this  means  to  me!  Angels  must  have 
brought  it,  for  there's  no  other  way  I  could  have  got  it," 
he  raved.  "  It's  not  only  the  money,  though  I  never  expected 
to  have  that  much  in  all  my  days.  It's  the  chance  it  gives 
me  to  marry  April.  She  has  always  been  poor*  too — Vir 
ginia  poor,  you  know — a  big  old  house,  horses,  a  few  hounds, 
a  lot  of  acres  and  niggers  and  all  that,  but  never  any 
cash. 

"The  poor  darling  went  to  New  York  to  try  to  lift  the 
family  out  of  the  rut.  She  took  up  sculpture — lots  of  talent, 
too — but  sculpture's  no  job  for  a  young  girl.  I  hate  it. 
We  had  quite  a  row  over  it. 

"But  she  took  up  driving  an  ambulance  when  the  war 
broke,  and  she  and  her  mother  have  had  to  skimp  more  than 
ever.  Now  I'm  a  billionaire,  I  can  start  in  business  right 
away.  We  can  get  married  without  waiting.  She  can  give 
up  her  sculpture  and  be  the  lady  she  is.  And  we'll  live 
happily  ever  after.  God!  ain't  it  great!" 

"Great!"  Dryden  yawned.  "I'll  appreciate  it  more  when 
I've  had  a  couple  more  winks." 

"No,  you  don't!  You  come  with  me  while  I  cable  April 
to  start  buying  her  trousseau.  I'll  buy  some  of  it  over  here 
myself.  What  could  I  get?" 

"Read  the  rest  of  the  letter.  She'll  probably  tell  you 
what  she  wants." 

"That's  a  good  idea!"  said  Bob,  and  dropped  into  a  chair. 
He  reread  the  golden  phrases,  chuckling.  Then  there  was 
a  silence  that  permitted  Dryden  to  do  the  "falling  leaf" 
through  slumberland,  till  he  was  awakened  by  a  sepulchral 
groan  from  Bob  and  merciless  jabs. 

"Listen  to  this!  I'm  sunk!  Oh,  sacre  nom  de  pup,  what 
a  piker  I  am!  Just  listen  to  this: 

"You  are  not  the  only  lucky  one.  Our  great-uncle  left  mamma  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  twenty-five  thousand  more  to  me. 
Isn't  it  astounding?  We're  all  rich!  Of  course,  your  ten  ought  to  have 
been  more,  but  we  oughtn't  to  look  these  sudden  riches  in  the  mouth. 

"Rich  as  I  am,  I  love  you  more  than  ever,  and  pray  for  your  quick 
return." 

34 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

Bob's  voice  sank  away.  He  gnawed  his  knuckles  in 
chagrin.  Dryden  was  startled  surly.  He  growled:  "What 
the —  Why  the  girlish  gloom  ?  You  poor  nut,  you've  got 
ten  thousand,  end  your  girl's  got  a  hundred  and  a  quarter. 
What  more  do  you  want?" 

Bob  moaned:  "Can't  you  see  that  I'm  a  goner?  This 
rotten  money  has  separated  us  forever.  She's  rich,  and  I'm 
a  pauper  alongside  of  her." 

"That's  easy.  You've  only  got  to  make  your  money  work 
for  you,  and  you'll  have  a  hundred  thou'  of  your  own." 

"But  what  will  her  money  be  doing  all  that  time?  When 
I  get  my  measly  hundred  thou'  she'll  be  a  millionairess. 
No,  Jim,  I'm  gone.  I've  lost  her.  Something  tells  me! 
I  wish  I  had  our  great-uncle  up  in  the  air  ten  miles.  I'd 
drop  him  into  the  English  Channel,  him  and  his  damned 
money  with  him." 

Dryden  tried  to  encourage  him,  but  Bob's  soul  had 
turned  another  of  its  somersaults.  He  had  shot  from  the 
clouds  to  the  hard  earth  in  one  fell  swoop  again. 

"Get  into  your  clothes,"  Bob  commanded.  "We'll  go 
out  and  try  to  drown  this  gashly  sorrow  before  it  kills  me." 

"We're  in  time  for  the  Louvre,  maybe,"  Dryden  proposed. 
"A  few  old  masters  might  cool  your  blood." 

"You  know  what  you  can  do  with  the  old  masters.  A 
few  young  misses  will  be  more  in  my  line.  I'm  an  outlaw 
now — thrown  out  in  a  cold  world.  Hurry  up  and  get  dressed, 
if  you're  coming  with  me." 

*  *  j  t**??**^   **j   j   **jg=r^, 

At  about  two  o'clock  the  following  morning  Robert  and 
James,  the  peerless  aviators,  spiraled  into  a  famous  bazaar 
of  wine,  woman,  song,  dance,  food,  and  facile  acquaintance. 
It  was  packed  to  suffocation,  and  it  resounded  with  such  a 
polyglot  racket  as  must  have  shivered  the  wine-shop  in  the 
basement  of  the  Tower  of  Babel. 

In  the  words  of  a  favorite  A.  E.  F.  poem  of  that  day 

"  With  vin  blanc  a  snootful  it's  hard  to  be  neutral 
In  the  famous  Battle  of  Paris." 

Bob  and  Jim  were  in  an  exigent  humor,  and,  finding  no 

35 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

other  place  to  sit,  invited  themselves  to  squeeze  in  with  a 
group  of  blear-eyed  officers  of  all  nations  surrounding  one 
bright-eyed  charmer  whose  beauty  was  as  cosmopolitan  as 
her  tastes.  This  highly  illumined  young  woman  greeted 
Bob  and  Jim  with  shrill  welcome  and  acclaimed  Us  Yankees 
as  the  saviors  of  the  whole  world.  Bob  and  Jim  accepted 
the  tribute  as  a  self-evident  platitude,  but  the  other  citizens 
of  the  world  demurred. 

The  Frenchman  asked  them  what  nation  had  made  the 
machines  they  flew  in. 

The  Britisher  asked  them  what  nation  had  made  the 
ships  that  brought  them  over. 

Jim,  with  fine  deference,  confessed  that  they  owed  the 
use  of  wind  and  water  to  France  and  England.  But  Bob 
growled: 

"You  were  mighty  glad  to  furnish  the  transportation!" 

A  wrangle  ensued  in  which  an  inflamed  Belgian  reminded 
them  that  if  Belgium  had  not  laid  herself  down  in  front  of 
the  Germans  and  held  them  for  a  few  days,  the  French 
could  never  have  stopped  them. 

The  Frenchman  cried,  "Ah,  but  we  stopped  zem — and 
holded  zem!"  An  Italian  laughed,  and  reminded  all  France 
that  Italy  had  saved  the  world,  since  Italy  had  broken  away 
from  the  alliance  with  Germany.  Italy  had  sent  word  to 
France  that  she  need  not  keep  troops  on  the  Italian  border, 
and  had  released  whole  armies  without  which  Joffre  and 
the  French  would  never  have  held  the  Germans  at  the 
Marne.  Italy  had  held  off  Austria  in  mountain-peaks  of  ice. 

The  Frenchman  and  the  Britisher  shouted  that  France  and 
England  had  to  save  Italy  from  complete  ruin  on  the  Piave. 

The  Britisher  observed  that  that  first  obliterated  Hundred 
Thousand  had  been  of  vital  help  to  France,  and  he  spoke 
with  ardor  of  the  great  fleet  that  kept  the  seas  open  night 
and  day  and  made  it  possible  for  America  to  prepare  her 
green  troops  and  get  them  over. 

Jim  tossed  imaginary  flowers  to  each  of  the  partizans,  and 
quoted  Schley's  Spanish  War  word. 

"There  is  glory  enough  for  us  all."  There  was  shame 
enough  for  all,  too,  and  sorrow,  regret,  and  pity.  America 
had  her  scandals,  her  cowards,  grafters,  traitors,  shames, 
and  shortcomings  as  well  as  the  rest. 

36 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

But  Bob  was  his  own  opposite  when  he  was  in  liquor. 
The  soul  of  modesty  and  chivalry  in  sobriety,  he  was  a  fiend 
of  arrogance  and  truculence  under  the  metamorphosis  of 
alcohol.  He  mocked  the  other  nations,  feeling  an  insane 
necessity  for  claiming  his  own  country  supreme  in  all  things 
good,  and  pure  of  every  evil.  An  aspersion  on  Columbia 
was  as  intolerable  to  Bob  as  a  hint  that  his  mother  was  im 
moral.  People  will  outgrow  the  petty  fallacies  of  patriotism 
and  rise  to  the  sublimities  of  internationalism  on  the  same 
day  that  they  realize  how  small  it  is  to  defend  their  own  par 
ents  from  criticism  and  oppose  the  communizing  of  their 
sisters  and  wives. 

All  the  late  Allies,  robbed  of  the  support  of  German  hos 
tility,  shouted  at  one  another,  each  against  each  and  each 
against  all.  Nobody  listened  to  anybody.  Scarlet  face 
glared  into  scarlet  face.  Fingers  were  shaken  under  noses. 
Sneer  answered  guffaw  of  derision.  Each  relapsed  into  his 
own  speech  and  contented  himself  with  confirming  his  own 
prejudice. 

Jim  Dryden  was  a  marvel  of  equilibrium.  He  would 
have  been  a  much  better  hero  for  a  biography  than  Bob, 
if  this  were  a  book  of  wisdom  or  etiquette.  Jim  could  fight 
upside  down  in  the  clouds,  or  rolling  over  and  over.  Even 
in  the  spinning  universe  about  him  now  he  kept  his  head. 
He  tried  to  pluck  the  infuriate  Bob  from  the  burning. 

He  said,  with  majestic  dignity:  "Bob,  old  tharling,  sinth 
these  gemlemen  are  so  self-suffithience,  less — let  us  sleave 
them  to  their  shelf-suffith —  You  know  what  I  mean." 

"No!"  Bob  roared,  with  the  fire  of  a  Patrick  Henry  as 
he  flung  off  Dryden's  hand.  "We  had  to  come  over  here  and 
show  these  babies  how  to  fight,  and  now  they're  tryin'  to 
welsh  on  us.  They  won't  give  us  credit." 

The  British  officer  retorted:  "Credit,  hell!  You  take  the 
cash  and  let  the  credit  go.  What  did  you  come  over  for  but 
to  collect  your  bills?  After  you'd  sold  us  all  the  rotten  goods 
we  could  absorb,  you  feared  you'd  be  left  out  at  the  Peace 
Table.  So  you  stuffed  your  conscripts  into  our  ships  to  be 
in  at  the  death.  Count  the  dead,  you  bleedin'  bounders! 
England  and  France  lost  more  men  by  millions  than  all  your 
swanking  Yankees  put  together." 

Dryden  caught  Bob's  arm  before  he  could  empty  his  glass 

37 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

into  that  British  face.  The  contents  drenched  the  Croix 
de  Guerre  on  the  Frenchman's  cerulean  uniform,  and  it 
took  the  Italian  and  the  Belgian  to  hold  him. 

The  quarrel  attracted  increasing  attention.  The  music 
raged  in  vain.  The  dancers  found  the  omens  of  battle  more 
interesting  than  their  jigs. 

A  Russian  without  a  country  held  forth  on  the  gigantic 
work  of  his  people,  the  myriads  of  Germans  they  had  slaugh 
tered,  the  millions  of  troops  they  had  kept  busy.  He  roared 
that  the  Americans  had  only  come  in  when  Russia  had  suc 
cumbed  to  the  Bolshevist  assassinations.  A  Pole  told  how 
the  Poles  had  been  the  backbone  of  Russian  resistance  while 
it  lasted,  and  called  attention  to  the  Polish  Legion  from 
America.  A  Czecho-Slovak  sang  of  the  immortal  retreat 
of  that  more  than  Xenophonian  army. 

A  Canadian,  a  New-Zealander,  a  Rumanian,  a  Serb  joined 
the  mass  about  the  table.  Each  had  his  country's  prestige 
to  maintain  at  all  costs. 

Nearly  every  man  there  had  proved  himself  absolutely 
without  fear  of  death.  Every  one  loved  his  own  people 
above  all  others.  Every  one  had  seen  some  fellow-soldier 
die,  had  known  the  devastation  of  the  long  war,  and  was 
poisoned  by  its  toxins. 

Nearly  every  one  had  some  grudge  against  nearly  every 
other  nation.  Each  forgot  his  grudges  against  his  own 
people,  his  own  officers,  or  the  politicians.  A  black  rage 
filled  the  air  with  a  gas,  not  a  laughing,  but  a  fighting,  gas. 
Head  waiters  and  foot  waiters  tried  to  calm  the  ominously 
buzzing  swarm,  tried  to  persuade  the  wranglers  back  to 
their  tables.  They  were  cursed  and  thrust  aside.  Women 
tried  to  coax  their  escorts  to  their  interrupted  communions 
again.  But  they  were  ignored. 

Bob  suffered  Dryden  to  hold  him  in  curb  for  a  while. 
Then  he  broke  free  in  a  mad  desire  to  vindicate  America's 
divine  superiority  to  all  other  nations.  Dryden  laughed  and 
caught  him  about  the  arms  and  tried  to  carry  him  out  to 
the  street. 

Bob  wrenched  loose. 

Jim  clinched. 

Bob  let  drive  a  vicious  blow. 

Jim  laughed  and  ducked. 

38 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

Bob's  fist  smashed  a  Portuguese  between  the  mustaches 
and  the  nwuche. 

He  squealed  with  wrath  and  struck  back  wildly,  landing 
behind  the  ear  of  an  Anzac,  who  bumped  into  a  resentful 
Canuck. 

Now  the  fight  was  on.  Everybody  struck  in  all  directions; 
women  screamed  and  scampered;  glasses  crashed;  silver 
tinkled;  blood  spurted.  Men  who  had  no  interest  in  the 
fight,  and  had  no  idea  as  to  what  it  was  all  about,  or  who 
struck  whom  first,  felt  the  urge  of  storm  in  their  nerves  and 
ran  into  the  fray.  It  was  a  splendid  insanity,  and  the  Ger 
mans  would  have  loved  it. 

A  scared  waiter  had  dashed  into  the  street  for  an  agent 
de  police.  He  had  found  a  knot  of  M.P.'s  loitering  outside 
on  the  quiet  curb.  They  came  in  with  a  will.  It  had  been 
a  dull  evening  for  them.  They  were  sober,  and  they  had  a 
good  running  start.  They  went  through  the  chaos  like 
battering-rams. 

They  found  Bob  and  Jim  fighting  back  to  back,  and  they 
remembered  their  instructions.  Bob  and  Jim  were  sobered 
by  the  horror  of  it.  The  more  the  twain  protested  that 
they  were  Americans  the  more  they  were  pummel  ed,  until 
at  last,  as  Homer  would  have  said,  the  merciful  gods  sent 
a  dreamless  sleep  upon  them — or,  as  we  would  say,  they 
went  out. 

The  M.P.'s  decided  that  it  was  too  late  and  too  trouble 
some  to  make  any  arrests.  They  left  their  victims  to  their 
consciences  and  their  mornings-after.  Bob  never  could  ex 
plain  how  or  when  he  reached  his  own  bed.  He  and  Jim 
agreed  eventually  that  they  had  seen  enough  of  Paris. 

They  went  back  to  their  camp.  Bob's  ringing  head  was 
quite  incapable  of  concocting  a  good  lie  to  tell  his  colonel. 
The  colonel  was  a  wise  officer  who  knew  that  it  is  not  well 
for  a  commander  to  know  too  much.  He  gave  Bob  a  sar 
donic  stare  and  an  ironic  welcome. 

"The  last  we  heard  of  you  you  were  doing  a  nose-spin. 
You  must  have  lit  good  and  hard.  Glad  to  take  you  up 
from  missing.  That's  all." 

He  did  not  explain  that,  aoting  on  Jim  Dryden's  sugges 
tion  on  the  day  of  Bob's  laH  fight,  he  had  recommended 
the  fallen  hero  for  a  cross  of  war  to  be  given  to  his  be- 
4  59 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

reaved  mother,  with  a  beautiful  account  of  her  son's  self- 
sacrifice. 

When  Bob  found  his  name  in  the  list  of  distinguished 
braves  he  wept  because  he  felt  himself  unworthy.  When 
he  was  sober  he  was  the  meekest  of  men,  and  much  can 
be  forgiven  a  soul  that  is  haughty  in  disgrace  and  humble  in 
triumph. 

The  homesickness  seized  him  hard.  He  hated  France 
and  made  himself  more  or  less  hateful  to  the  French.  They 
were  as  eager  to  see  him  and  his  fellows  out  of  the  country 
as  the  Americans  were  to  be  off. 

The  Allies  had  got  on  one  another's  nerves  and  seemed 
doomed  to  stay  there.  Average  young  Yankees  went  about 
cursing  the  French  as  thieves  because  prices  were  high. 
In  America  the  papers  were  full  of  rancor  against  Americans 
on  the  same  account.  Cartoons  of  lynched  profiteers  were 
highly  popular  all  over  the  world.  But  it  seemed  a  little 
more  heinous  to  be  overcharged  by  a  foreigner. 

Normally  decent  young  American  officers  went  down 
Parisian  boulevards  singing  indecent  songs,  and  the  next 
day  berated  French  immorality. 

When  our  Revolutionary  War  was  ended  by  the  rescuing 
French  exactly  the  same  state  of  affairs  existed  with  terms 
reversed.  The  account  that  Rochambeau  gave  of  American 
ingratitude  and  greed  would  express  the  American  bitterness 
perfectly,  mutatis  mutandis. 

The  Americans,  who  had  blazed  with  love  of  France  and 
had  spoken  of  her  as  of  a  holy  land  inspired  by  a  divine  race, 
now  loathed  the  place  and  the  people  and  made  no  bones 
of  saying  so.  But  it  was  not  France  or  the  French  they 
hated;  it  was  absence  from  home.  As  some  one  said,  they 
would  have  been  just  as  hateful  of  heaven  if  they  had  been 
quartered  there.  They  would  have  slandered  the  angels 
as  they  did  the  French. 

In  after  years  they  would  speak  tenderly  of  sacred  France, 
and  a  mist  of  beauty  would  lend  enchantment  to  the  ex 
perience. 

It  was  a  long  time,  and  the  months  seemed  years,  before 
Bob  got  his  sailing  orders.  He  had  a  narrow  escape  from 
garrison  duty  in  Coblenz.  Then  one  gay  day  he  received 
his  word.  He  and  Jimmy  Dryden  just  made  Brest  and  the 

40 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

transport  gliding  away.  As  his  keel  rolled  home,  Bob  forgot 
his  resentments  against  everybody  and  everything  Euro 
pean,  in  his  resentment  against  the  fate  that  had  mocked 
him  with  ten  thousand  dollars  and  his  sweetheart  with  ten 
times  as  much. 

The  maddening  thing  about  it  was  that  he  could  not  agree 
with  himself  upon  either  alternative — living  without  April  or 
trying  to  live  with  her  in  spite  of  her  incompatible  opulence. 

A  week  later  Bob's  airship  soul  shot  soaring  to  the  heavens 
again,  for  among  the  bundles  of  late  newspapers  thrown 
aboard  the  transport  as  it  neared  New  York  was  a  copy  of 
the  Sunday  Sun  with  the  page-wide  head-lines: 

ALL  THE  WORLD  JOINS  IN  WILD  SCRAMBLE  FOR  OIL- 
FORTUNES.  ARGONAUTS  OF  1919  SEEK  UNTOLD  MILLIONS 
IN  PRECIOUS  FLUID  THAT  ENRICHES  MANY  LANDS. 
RUSH  LIKE  THAT  OF  'FORTY-NINERS  TO  TEXAS  FIELDS. 
SPECULATION  IN  STOCK  MARKETS  IS  FRENZIED.  POOR 
MEN  BECOME  WEALTHY  OVERNIGHT  AND  GREAT  PROF 
ITS  ARE  MADE  ON  "SHOESTRINGS." 

Bob  read  this  and  ran  to  Jimmy  Dryden,  ran  to  him,  as 
the  negro  spiritual  says,  "with  a  rainbow  on  his  shoulder." 
And  he  cried: 

"Eureka!    Eureka!    I  have  found  it!    I  have  found  it!" 

1 '  Found  what  ?    Your  last  cootie  ?' ' 

"Look,  you  poor  fish!  Here's  where  I  make  myself  a 
billionaire." 

While  Jimmy  read,  Bob  stood  by,  dancing  clog-steps  of 
joy.  He  burbled: 

"With  ten  thousand  dollars  to  start  with,  what  can't  I 
do?  That's  some  shoestring,  I'll  say!" 

"Not  to  mention  a  swell  chance  to  lose  it  all." 

"On  your  way,  you  crape-hanger!  I  got  my  start  in 
the  air  at  Texas,  and  here's  where  I  go  back  and  clean  up." 

"Get  cleaned  out,  you  mean,"  said  the  level-headed 
Dryden.  "Look  at  this." 

He  held  a  copy  of  The  Tribune  under  Bob's  eyes.  ,  Bob 
read  with  majestic  scorn  the  head-lines: 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

LAW  POWERLESS  TO  STOP  ORGY  OF  OIL  SWINDLERS. 
WILDEST  FRAUD  IN  HISTORY.  STOCK  EXCHANGE  GOV 
ERNORS  SAY  KAFIR  AND  GOLDFIELD  CRAZES  ARE  FAR 
ECLIPSED. 

Bob  brushed  the  paper  aside  with  a  sweep  like  Cyrano's  as 
he  tossed  his  last  coin  to  the  players — the  deed  reckless,  but 
the  gesture  magnificent. 

"I  never  was  afraid  to  take  a  chance,"  said  Bob. 

"But  you  were  always  afraid  to  take  advice,"  said  Jim. 

"You're  a  good  one  to  preach  conservatism,"  Bob  laughed, 
flicking  the  cross  on  Dry  den's  blouse.  "You'd  never  have 
had  that  if  you  had  been  as  careful  as  you  want  me  to  be." 

Jim,  for  repartee,  flicked  the  cross  on  Bob's  blouse. 

"And  you'll  lose  that  before  you  crawl  back  out  of  the 
oil-tanks." 

'What'll  you  bet?" 

'Cross  against  Cross." 

'That  I  lose  my  money  in  oil?" 

'Yes;  if  you  go  in." 

'You're  on!" 

'How  about  that  girl  of  yours?" 

'  She'll  wait.    I'm  going  away  from  her  to  get  back  to  her." 

'Many  go  away,  but  few  come  back." 

Bob  just  laughed. 


CHAPTER  VII 

"TIT" AS  you  ever  hit  wit'  a  sick  tomatta?" 

W  Nearly  everybody  in  America  by  this  time  must 
have  heard  that  plaintive  question  asked  by  Mr.  Mclntyre 
after  he  has  been  hit  with  one  by  Mr.  Heath,  his  partner 
in  that  ambrosial  vaudeville  team. 

Those  who  have  not  heard  it  ought  to  hear  it;  and  those 
who  have  will  be  glad  to  hear  it  again,  even  in  an  inaccurate 
quotation  from  the  sacred  text  of  one  of  the  finest  passages 
in  dramatic  art,  ancient  or  modern. 

Mr.  Mclntyre,  in  a  white-duck  suit  splashed  with  a  great 
sunburst  of  red,  detains  a  reluctant  listener  to  explain  his 
pathetic  experience.  He  describes  his  sorrow  at  beholding 
his  beloved  yaller  gal  walking  off  with  a  fierce-looking  colored 
stranger  (Mr.  Heath)  who  later  appears  with  a  revolver  as 
a  watch-charm. 

Mr.  Mclntyre  confesses  that  he  made  no  more  vigorous 
protest  against  the  abduction  than  a  pusillanimous  and 
pathetic  "'Hoo-oo!'  Dat's  all — jest  'Hoo-oo!'" 

Thereupon  the  doubly  injurious  stranger,  finding  himself 
in  front  of  a  grocery-store,  reached  for  a  missile.  His  hand 
touched  a  basket  of  tomatoes.  But  he  was  not  content 
merely  to  take  a  chance  one  from  the  top  of  the  basket. 

"He  had  to  dribble  'em  aside  till  he  come  to  a  tomatta 
what  wasn't  feelin'  very  well." 

After  further  very  wonderful  descriptions  of  that  woeful 
vegetable,  Mr.  Mclntyre  asks  his  listener: 

"Was  you  ever  hit  wit'  a  brick?  No?  Well,  dey's  sumpin' 
noble  about  bein'  hit  wit'  a  brick.  You  kin  see  it  a-comin'. 
But  a  tomatta!  And  a  sick  tomatta!" 

There  seems  to  be  nothing  else  in  literature  that  could 
express  better  the  general  feeling  of  Uncle  Sam,  John  Bull, 
in  fact  old  Mr.  Everybody  at  the  outcome  of  the  war.  The 
battle-sick  world  having  hailed  the  arrival  of  Peace  with 

43 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

gigantic  revelry,  saw  her  walk  off  with  a  dark  gentleman 
named  Chaos,  who  at  the  first  sigh  of  "Hoo-oo!"  threw  a 
sick  tomatta  that  splashed  all  over  the  festive  white  garb 
of  mankind. 

In  place  of  one  nice  big  war  there  was  a  splash  of  a  score 
of  nasty  little  ones.  Even  the  ceremony  of  welcoming 
soldiers  home  became  the  occasion  of  ferocious  rows  lasting 
for  months.  The  Mayor's  Committee  of  New  York  was  a 
storm-center,  and  it  seethed  with  resignations,  declinations, 
charges,  and  recharges. 

The  poor  soldiers  were  almost  forgotten  in  the  rumpus, 
and  some  of  them  were  allowed  to  come  up  the  Bay  and 
sneak  to  the  dock  without  a  greeting.  Others  were  over 
whelmed  with  honors.  But  there  were  so  many  of  them — 
two  million  and  more,  besides  all  the  civilian  hordes,  and 
the  women;  and  they  poured  in  upon  New  York  and  other 
ports  in  a  deluge.  And  their  relatives  poured  into  New  York 
and  other  ports  to  meet  them.  Soldiers  from  the  tamer  por 
tions  inland  were  in  no  hurry  to  get  back  to  the  plow  and  the 
counter.  New  York  needed  a  bit  of  looking  over. 

The  problem  of  unemployment  was  a  tremendous  one  at 
best.  It  was  not  simplified  by  the  almost  universal  refusal 
of  the  soldiers  to  go  back  to  the  jobs  they  had  had  before. 
The  little  jaunt  overseas  and  the  long  hike  through  hell 
had  worked  a  revolution  in  every  individual.  Everybody 
suffered  a  sea-change  and  a  war-change. 

New  York  became  one  unresting  seethe,  like  the  gorge 
where  the  wide  waters  of  Niagara  try  to  rage  through  one 
whirlpool  at  once. 

The  largest  hotel  in  the  world,  the  Pennsylvania,  and  the 
next  to  the  largest,  the  Commodore,  were  opened  in  the 
same  week  with  thousands  of  rooms.  And  they  were  in 
stantly  packed.  New  guests  walked  into  each  room  the 
moment  the  painter  made  his  exit,  and  the  lobbies  were  like 
theaters  letting  out. 

A  frenzy  of  rejoicing  over  eternal  peace  had  set  the  world 
afire.  Theoretically  everybody  was  disgusted  with  the  con 
dition  of  the  world.  Practically  everybody  said,  "Eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry,  for  to-morrow  we  fight  again."  The 
craze  for  dancing  had  never  abated  during  the  war;  it  took 
on  new  ardor  now. 

44 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

Everybody  had  money  to  spend,  and  nobody  seemed  to 
know  just  where  it  came  from  or  where  it  went.  The 
appalling  prices  seemed  to  deter  no  one.  Everybody  pro 
tested,  but  spent.  The  prosperity  had  a  strange  effect  on 
dramatic  art,  for  the  poorest  plays  were  so  patronized  by 
the  overflow  from  the  better  ones  that  they  became  financial 
triumphs  and  ran  the  season  out.  People  had  to  go  some 
where.  They  flowed  along  the  streets  in  a  kind  of  lava, 
looking  for  something  to  flow  into.  As  soon  as  one  place 
was  clogged  the  stream  automatically  moved  on  to  the  next. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  soldiers,  in  France,  on  guard  in 
Germany,  and  in  Siberia  and  in  arctic  Archangel,  felt  them 
selves  abandoned  by  a  heartless  country. 

They  sang: 

"We  drove  the  Boche  across  the  Rhine, 

The  Kaiser  from  his  throne; 
Oh,  Lafayette,  we've  paid  our  debt. 
For  Christ's  sake,  send  us  home." 

They  had  to  vent  their  grudges  on  their  neighbors  or  on 
one  another.  The  remoter  garrisons  took  to  vodka  with 
appalling  enthusiasm.  They  grew  unmanageable.  Military 
discipline  was  a  frail,  elastic  band  that  had  lost  its  snap.  An 
English  soldier  came  home  from  Siberia  with  the  query: 

"Wot  the  bloomin'  'ell's  the  matter  with  the  Yanks? 
'Arf  the  American  army  is  chysin'  the  other  'arf  with  fixed 
b'yonets." 

Stupendous  efforts  were  made  to  get  the  soldiers  home 
before  some  terrific  explosion  took  place.  All  winter,  all 
spring,  all  summer  they  kept  a-coming  back  and  a-coming 
back. 

The  ship  that  brought  Bob  Taxter  back  home  carried  ten 
thousand  men  at  once.  It  got  into  the  Bay  and  lay  there, 
fogbound,  for  several  hours.  Bob  was  tempted  to  jump  over 
board  and  swim  ashore.  He  was  in  a  frenzy  not  only  to  see 
April,  but  to  plunge  into  the  oil-fields  and  there  turn  his  ten 
thousand  dollars  into  a  hundred  thousand,  half  a  million. 

He  read  and  reread  what  the  newspapers  told  of  the 
Texas  fever.  The  more  Jimmy  Dryden  pointed  out  the  risk 
the  more  Bob  was  fascinated.  The  world  had  learned  to 
love  danger  and  to  despise  caution. 

45 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

When  the  fog  lifted,  the  mayor's  boat  was  tardy  and  the 
transatlantic  excursionists  had  to  stick  at  anchor.  When 
at  last  the  committee  of  welcome  arrived  it  found  a  left- 
handed  welcome  waiting  for  it.  The  ship  was  fairly  stuccoed 
with  heads,  heads  at  every  available  point.  Jeers  and  mob- 
humor  greeted  the  officials.  But  the  Statue  of  Liberty 
received  a  bombardment  of  cheers.  She  accepted  them  with 
lofty  calm. 

The  ship  drew  up  at  last  at  the  pier  in  Hoboken.  The  bulk 
of  the  men  lived  far  to  the  west.  But  all  eyes  clung  to  the 
unequaled  splendor  of  the  New  York  sierra.  It  was  a  mar 
velous  thing  to  have  come  back  to  Paradise  Regained.  It 
was  sublime  not  to  have  stayed  in  France  beneath  one  of 
those  seventy  thousand  little  crosses. 

Bob  needed  only  one  thing  to  perfect  his  home-coming, 
and  that  was  the  sight  of  April  standing  on  the  shore,  waiting 
to  greet  him.  He  felt  that  her  very  beauty  would  make  her 
as  conspicuous  in  the  multitudes  as  the  Statue  of  Liberty. 
He  had  been  a  little  surprised  that  she  was  not  on  the 
mayor's  boat.  He  had  half  expected  to  see  her  drift  up 
through  an  eddy  with  mermaidenly  grace  and  wave  a  drip 
ping  arm  to  him. 

But  returning  to  New  York  in  a  transport  was  somewhat 
different  from  coming  back  to  Greece  from  Troy.  Girls 
could  not  wait  on  the  beach  till  the  prow  came  lunging  in 
ahead  of  the  sand-grooving  keel.  Transports  had  to  crawl 
up  the  populous  river  and  be  slowly  warped  into  huge  slips 
between  vast  sheds.  And  the  rules  were  strict.  Soldiers 
were  not  supposed  to  be  met  until  they  had  been  de-loused, 
sterilized  and  invoiced  and  receipted  for;  only  the  most 
extraordinary  pull  could  procure  a  pass  to  the  dock,  and 
even  then  the  most  tireless  patience  and  ingenuity  could 
hardly  manage  to  meet  the  right  boat  at  the  right  time,  or 
find  the  individual  sought  for  in  the  panic  of  debarkation 
and  transfer  to  the  demobilization  camps. 

April  had  made  some  preliminary  investigations  and 
learned  that  it  would  be  a  fool's  errand  to  hunt  for  Bob, 
especially  as  she  could  get  no  hint  as  to  the  time  of  his 
arrival.  He  had  sent  her  two  or  three  cables  saying  that 
he  would  sail  on  such  or  such  a  boat  only  to  be  held  back 
for  one  reason  or  another.  He  had  despatched  a  wireless 

46 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

into  the  air  from  the  transport,  but  her  letter  giving  her 
new  address  was  packed  in  a  trunk  he  could  not  reach,  and 
his  memory  played  him  false. 

Sending  a  telegram  to  the  house  next  door  in  New  York 
is  about  as  vain  as  addressing  it  to  another  planet.  When 
Bob  wrote  down  the  right  house-number,  but  the  wrong 
street  and  the  wrong  side  of  the  town,  he  might  as  well 
have  saved  the  price  of  the  message.  His  wireless  never 
reached  April. 

But  Bob  assumed,  as  senders  do,  that  the  addressees  are 
always  in  error,  and  he  was  greatly  cut  up  about  April's 
dereliction.  The  war  had  taught  him  that  no  excuse  is  good 
for  a  failure  to  arrive  on  the  firing-line  at  the  critical  moment. 
He  had  a  foolish  feeling  that  even  if  the  wireless  missed  her, 
some  womanly  intuition  ought  to  have  told  April  that  he 
would  land,  and  just  where  and  when,  if  she  really  cared. 

What  was  the  use  of  telepathy  and  the  subconscious  and 
all  that  sort  of  thing  which  so  many  scientists  were  adver 
tising  if  they  could  not  even  get  a  fellow's  girl  to  a  dock? 

Bob  was  bitterly  disappointed  in  April,  and  his  only  con 
solation  was  the  thought  that  when  he  was  an  oil-millionaire 
he  might  take  up  with  some  other  girl  just  to  teach  her  a 
lesson. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

APRIL  was  in  an  ideal  mood  for  receiving  telegrams,  too, 
but  something  insulated  her  and  Bob  from  each  other, 
though  both  of  them  were  sending  out  soul-sparks  in  waves 
of  high  voltage.  The  very  morning  that  Bob  landed,  April 
was  so  lonely  for  him  that  she  begged  off  from  her  Motor 
Corps  work  on  the  plea  of  a  sick  headache  which  was  really 
a  sick  heartache.  She  felt  a  sudden  call  to  go  home  to  her 
studio  and  work  on  the  ideal  statue  of  Bob  that  had  occupied 
many  a  spare  hour.  It  had  been  a  doleful  comfort  to  her 
to  build  an  image  of  her  idol ;  it  kept  her  hands  busy  as  well 
as  her  love. 

She  had  left  her  mother  opening  a  new  batch  of  letters 
inviting  her  attention  to  ideal  investments.  The  Chatterson 
legacy  had  been  mentioned  in  the  newspapers,  and  it  had 
attracted  the  attention  of  all  the  legitimate  and  illegitimate 
capital-hunters  who  are  accustomed  to  work  through  the 
mails.  An  incessant  stream  of  letters  had  been  falling  about 
Mrs.  Summerlin's  bewildered  head  ever  since. 

Where  hundreds  of  money-hunters  had  been  content  to 
beseech  her  attention  through  letters  and  circulars  a  dozen 
had  succeeded  in  getting  emissaries  to  her  on  various  pre 
texts.  Among  the  most  winning  of  these  was  the  elderly 
Mr.  Kenneth  Kellogg,  who  masked  his  adroit  campaigns 
against  her  fortune  under  a  subtly  implied  infatuation  for 
herself.  Mrs.  Summerlin  had  been  a  widow  for  a  good 
while.  She  was  pretty  and  human  and  Southern,  and  she 
enjoyed  attention.  It  did  not  seem  unreasonable  that 
a  man  should  fall  in  love  with  her.  She  had  no  intention 
of  loving  anybody,  she  told  herself  and  her  daughter,  but 
it  is  hard  to  be  insulted  by  respectful  adoration.  Mr.  Kellogg 
seemed  to  adore;  and  he  was  certainly  respectful.  He  talked 
money  only  when  she  brought  it  up,  and  he  apparently  had 
plenty  of  his  own.  He  was  liberal  with  it,  too.  He  had 

48 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

taken  her  and  April  to  the  theater  on  many  a  dull  evening. 
He  was  very  felicitous  with  flowers. 

Ever  since  April  left,  Mrs.  Summerlin  had  alternated 
between  answering  the  telephone  and  studying  the  letters, 
all  of  them  written  with  all  of  the  allurement  of  practised 
solicitors.  Her  only  safety  was  in  the  number  of  irresistible 
attractions. 

Shortly  before  April  got  home;  the  telephone  rang  for 
the  fifth  or  sixth  time.  Mrs.  Summerlin,  immobilized  by 
a  lapful  of  letters,  called  out  to  the  faithful  old  negress 
who  was  still  all  the  servants  of  that  household: 

"Pansy!    Pansy!    The  telephone — the  telephone!" 

The  wrinkled  crone  whom  Fate  had  tried  to  deride  by 
naming  her  Pansy  shuffled  into  the  studio,  grumbling: 

"I  year  it.  I  tell  you  dat  ol'  telephome  has  just  abote 
wrung  me  ote  these  las'  few  months."  She  took  down  the 
receiver  and  put  it  to  her  ear,  and  her  big  lips  to  the  trans 
mitter  with  the  effect  of  a  trained  chimpanzee,  and  called 
into  it. 

"Hello,  hello!  Who?  Oh!  Yassa!  Nossa!  Wait  a 
minute,  please."  She  turned  and  called  to  Mrs.  Summerlin: 

"It's  Mistoo  Kellogg.  He  wants  to  know  can  he  come 
ova  to  see  you-all." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  in  need  of  a  rescuer.  She  gasped, 
"Oh,  I  wish  he  would!" 

Pansy  repeated  the  message  with  a  grimace:  "Oh,  we  wish 
you  would !  Wait  a  minute,  please."  She  turned  again  to  ask : 
"He  asks  is  Miss  April  home ?  I  know  she  ain't,  but  is  she ?" 

"Tell  him  she's  out  with  her  car.  But  I'd  like  some  advice 
about  our  odious  money." 

Pansy,  the  transmitter,  passed  along  the  message.  "We 
ain't  expectin'  Miss  Summalin,  but  Miz  Summalin  says 
p'r'aps  you  could  give  us  some  'vice  abote  our  odorless 
money.  Yassa.  Good-bysa." 

She  turned.  "He  says  he'll  be  here  pleasantly."  She 
gazed  at  the  gray-haired  widow  who  was  still  to  her  the 
little  girl  she  had  always  tyrannized  over,  and  said : 

"He  didn't  seem  to  be  ve'y  sorry  to  hear  Miss  April  ain't 
year.  Look  lak  that  man  gittin'  fancy  notions  abote  yew, 
Miss  Ma'y.  You  ain't  lookin'  to  take  up  wit'  no  Nawtherner 
lak  what  he  is — is  ye  or  is  ye?" 

49 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"You'd  better  be  looking  to  your  kitchen!"  Mrs.  Sum- 
merlin  snapped.  Pansy  laughed  as  at  an  impertinent  child, 
and  started  to  shuffle  out,  but  paused  as  Mrs.  Summerlin 
tore  a  letter  in  two  angrily  and  threw  it  at  the  waste-basket, 
a  target  on  which  her  percentage  of  hits  was  not  high. 
Pansy  laughed. 

"Who  dat?  Some  otha  Nawtheren  gemman  makin'  up 
to  yew?" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  ignored  the  privileged  impudence  and 
sniffed : 

"Humph!  They  only  off  a  six  per  cent,  on  the  invest 
ment." 

"Is  dat  all?"  said  Pansy,  blankly,  shaking  her  head  in 
amazement  as  Mrs.  Summerlin  ripped  another  letter  across 
and  missed  the  basket  again.  Pansy  moved  over,  dropped 
on  her  knees,  picked  up  the  letter  and  pushed  it  down  into 
the  basket  as  Mrs.  Summerlin  sniffed  again: 

"Humph!    Only  twenty  per  cent.!" 

"It's  gettin'  betta,  anyhow,"  Pansy  suggested. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  patted  a  stack  of  letters  on  her  desk  and 
said:  "But  all  of  these  guarantee  from  a  hundred  to  a 
thousand  per  cent." 

"Is  dat  much?"  Pansy  wondered,  aloud. 

' '  Much  ?  Why,  a  hundred  per  cent,  on  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars  is — let  me  see."  She  started  to  figure  on  the  back  of 
an  envelop,  then  gave  it  up.  "It's — well,  anyway,  it's  a  great 
deal  of  money." 

"But  do  you  git  it?"  said  Pansy,  whose  experienced  igno 
rance  made  her  skeptical  of  all  promises. 

"Why,  they  guarantee  it!"  Mrs.  Summerlin  exclaimed. 

"But  why?    Dat's  what  I  ast  you — why?" 

"Why?  Why,  because  we  lend  them  our  money;  they  get 
the  use  of  it,  don't  you  see?" 

"Oh,  dey  git  de  use  of  it!  Ump-umm!  If  me  was  you, 
I'd  take  de  use  of  dat  money  ma  own  se'f." 

"You're  no  financier,  Pansy." 

"No'm.  I  been  called  'mos'  all  de  names  dey  is,  but 
nobody  ever  allowed  I  was  a — what  you  said." 

"Listen  to  this,"  said  Mrs.  Summerlin,  reading  aloud, 
more  for  company  than  counsel:  " '//  is  almost  harder  to  keep 
money  than  to  make  it.  Learning  of  your  good  fortune,  and 

5° 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

realizing  that  there  are  countless  swindlers  laying  traps  for  the 
unwary,  we  beg  to  offer  you  the  opportunity  of  a  lifetime  to 
acquire  stock  in  the  most  wonderful  invention  of  our  times — ' " 

"What  use  you-all  got  for  a  invention?" 

"It's  not  the  invention,  but  the  stock." 

"Me,  I  don't  take  much  stock  in  no  stocks." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  smiled  at  her  stubbornness  and  read  the 
next: 

"'Dear  Madam:  Did  you  know  that  the  original  telephone 
stock  was  sold  at  four  dollars  a  share — '" 

"No'm,  I  didn't!" 
" — and  is  now  worth  four  thousand  dollars  a  share?1 " 

"Better  do  like  I  do — keep  it  in  a  sock,  'stead  of  a  stock." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  pried  open  another  envelop  and  skimmed 
its  contents.  "  The  opportunity  of  a  lifetime!  Did  you  know 
— original  telephone  stock — four  dollars — four  thousand — " 

This  letter  joined  the  jetsam  on  the  floor.  Pansy  scooped 
it  up. 

"If  you  don't  hit  dat  old  Vestment  any  closer  'n  what  you 
hit  dis  was'e-basket,  you'm  a  goner.  You  betta  take 
my  advice  and  spend  yo'  money  yo'  own  se'f." 

"Don't  bother  me.    Can't  you  see  I'm  busy?" 

"I'm  older  'n  what  you  is,  honey,  by  goin'  on  a  hund'ed 
per  cent. — " 

"But  what  do  you  know  about  money?" 

"I  don'  know  nothin'.  Dat's  why  I's  lived  so  long.  I's 
noticed  dat  folks  what  has  money  mostly  buys  trouble  wid  it." 

Reading  on,  Mrs.  Summerlin  absently  justified  herself: 

"Well,  it  was  left  to  us  in  a  legacy,  and  we've  got  to  do 
something  with  it." 

"Seems  to  me  I'd  lay  out  some  of  it  on  clo'es  for  dat  child 
of  yours — growed-up  young  lady  goin'  round  in  breeches  and 
boots!" 

"Why,  that's  her  Motor  Corps  costume!  She's  done 
wonderful  good  with  it,  driving  her  ambulance  like  a  Sister 
of  Charity." 

"I  never  seen  no  Sister  of  Charity  goin'  round  in  pants. 
I  tell  you,  if  de  Lawd  wanted  women  goin'  round  in  pants, 
He'd  'a'  provided  'em.  Kin  you  'magine  me — " 

"Pansy!     Don't  be  indecent!" 

"No'm,  I  ain't  goin'  to  be." 

Si 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Besides,  now  that  the  demobilization  is  beginning,  Miss 
April  will  be  giving  up  her  uniform  and  going  back  to 
petticoats." 

"It's  hah  tahm!"  cried  Pansy;  "hah  tahm!" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  gazed  at  the  remaining  letters  with  dis 
couragement. 

"To  think  that  I  should  live  to  be  worried  by  too  much 
money!" 

"  Dat  certain'y  is  a  new  kind  of  trouble  for  us  Summalins." 

"And  nobody  I  can  trust — just  us  two  women!" 

"Us  two?  Ain't  I  yeah?"  Pansy  demanded,  deeply 
wounded. 

"Oh  yes,  but  we  need  a  man's  advice." 

The  sound  of  a  key  was  heard  in  the  door,  and  Pansy 
struggled  to  her  feet. 

"Year's  de  young  gemman  of  de  family — latch-key  and 
all." 

April  came  in  slowly  and  moodily,  flinging  her  cap  aside, 
touching  her  hair  up  idly  and  going  somnambulistically 
across  the  room  to  kiss  her  mother. 

Pansy  stared  at  her  and  broke  out  again: 

"Lawdy,  child,  I'll  be  glad  when  you  goes  back  to  common 
sense  and  pettiskirts.  I'm  just  achin'  to  see  you  a  lady  ag'in." 

April  turned  on  her  petulantly.  "Do  you  see  anything 
immodest  about  this  costume?" 

"I  ain't  said  nothin'  about  immodes',"  Pansy  explained; 
"it's  the  stravagance." 

"Why,  these  clothes  are  not  extravagant!  One  uniform 
has  lasted  all  this  time." 

"I'm  tellin'  you  dem  duds  is  spendfrift!" 

"How  so?" 

"  'Ca'se,  I  say,  women  ought  to  save  they  laigs  for  special 
occasiums.  It's  ma  opinion  dat  ev'body  ought  to  keep  a 
few  secrets  for  a  rainy  day." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  shocked.  "Pansy,  you  go  right  along 
about  your  business  this  very  minute." 

"Yassum!"  said  Pansy,  toting  the  waste-basket  with  her, 
but  pausing  to  point  to  the  letters  on  the  desk  and  suggest: 

"Better  lea'  me  carry  dem  off,  too.  Save  you  a  lot  mo' 
stravagance." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  motioned  her  away,  and  she  went  out 

52 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

lugging  the  basket-load  of  opportunities  of  a  lifetime.  She 
made  a  curious  burlesque  in  black  marble  of  the  Nymph  of 
Plenty  that  April  had  so  admired.  Now  April,  glancing 
at  the  remaining  heaps,  smiled  over  at  her  mother. 

"Still  reading  love-letters?" 

Her  mother  sighed:  "Every  one  of  these  is  the  opportunity 
of  a  lifetime.  Did  you  know,  honey,  that  you  could  have 
bought  the  original  Bell  Telephone  stock  at  four  dollars  a 
share?  And  now  it's  four  thousand  dollars." 

"Sorry  I  didn't  hear  about  it  at  the  time,"  said  April,  as 
she  slipped  her  arms  through  a  modeling-apron  and  went 
to  her  stand.  "Funny!  Everybody  in  the  world  seems  to 
have  read  about  our  legacy  in  the  papers.  That  Mr.  Clyde 
we  met  a  few  weeks  ago  is  positively  oppressive  with  his 
attentions.  I  finally  decided  to  turn  him  loose  on  you. 
Has  he  called  yet." 

"No,  and  he  needn't.  I've  asked  Mr.  Kellogg  to  come 
over.  I've  got  to  have  some  help.  That  Mr.  Clyde  is  in 
Wall  Street,  isn't  he?" 

"No,  he's  in  Broad  Street.  He  says  there  are  the  most 
wonderful  opportunities  to  make  perfect  scads  of  money  on 
the  Stock  Exchange.  He  says  there  has  never  been  known 
such  a  panic  of  prosperity;  two-million-share  days  are  com 
mon  on  the  Street  now,  and  money  is  simply  boiling  over, 
he  says." 

"Now,  honey,  we're  not  going  into  any  stock-market 
schemes.  We  must  keep  out  of  Wall  Street — and  Broad 
Street,  too." 

"It's  the  place  to  make  the  big  money,  Mr.  Clyde  says." 

"Oh  dear!  You're  just  like  your  father.  He  never  had 
any  business  instinct.  Now,  my  father — " 

"Died  poor." 

"Yes,  but  he  had  a  wonderful  business  instinct,  which  I 
inherit." 

April  smiled  with  the  patronizing  tolerance  of  youth  for 
elderly  illusions  and  went  on  shaping  and  reshaping  the 
oiled-clay  statuette  of  her  lover,  wondering  where  he  was 
and  never  dreaming  that  he  was  in  Hoboken  at  that  very 
moment,  wondering  where  she  was. 

She  and  her  mother  were  both  silent  at  their  tasks  when  Mr. 
Kellogg  arrived,  a  glistening,  globular  man  with  a  soapy  smile. 

53 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

He  carried  a  bouquet  of  flowers  as  a  sort  of  flag  of  truce. 
April  watched  her  mother  being  flattered,  and  felt  the  im 
patience  of  youth  for  parental  susceptibility  to  blandish 
ments.  She  did  not  see  that  Mrs.  Summerlin's  heart  went 
out  to  the  flowers  rather  than  to  their  profferer. 

Mr.  Kellogg  wandered  over  to  April  with  his  well-creased 
palm  up,  but  she  said: 

"My  hands  are  impossible." 

He  stared  at  her  work  and  chortled,  "  Doing  a  little  model 
ing,  eh?" 

" Sherlock  Holmes!" 

He  shook  a  pudgy  forefinger  at  her  and  turned  back  to 
his  more  definite  client,  who  moaned: 

"Oh,  Mr.  Kellogg,  I'm  in  such  distress!  Just  look  at  these 
letters — all  of  them  offering  us  fortunes.  I've  thrown  away 
all  the  cheap  ones  that  promise  only  ten  or  twenty  per  cent. 
These  offer  us  at  least  a  hundred.  By  the  way,  how  much 
is  a  hundred  per  cent,  on  a  hundred  thousand  dollars,  Mr. 
Kellogg?" 

"A  hundred  thousand  dollars,"  said  Kellogg. 

"Yes,  just  how  much  is  a  hundred  per  cent,  on  it?" 

"A  hundred  thousand  dollars." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  a  bit  vexed  at  his  stupidity.  "That's 
what  I  said.  I  could  figure  it  out  myself,  but  I'm  so  busy. 
How  much  is  a  hundred  per  cent,  on  our  money?" 

Kellogg  was  desperately  patient.  He  put  it  more  plainly. 
"A  hundred  per  cent,  on  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  is  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars." 

"Oh,  I  see,"  said  Mrs.  Summerlin  with  great  wisdom. 
"Then  if  we  get  a  hundred  per  cent.,  we  shall  have  all  we 
began  with  and  just  as  much  more?" 

"If  you  get  it,"  Kellogg  smiled. 

"Of  course  we'd  get  it,"  Mrs.  Summerlin  averred.  "I 
wouldn't  put  the  money  into  anything  that  wasn't  sure. 
They'd  have  to  give  me  their  solemn  promise  as  to  that. 
But  I  hardly  know  how  to  decide." 

April  came  over  to  chaperon  their  intimacy.  Wiping  her 
hands  on  her  apron,  she  cried: 

"I'll  close  my  eyes  and  pick  one." 

"Fine!"  said  Mrs.  Summerlin,  who  welcomed  any  means 
of  decision.  She  held  out  a  sheaf  and  shut  her  own  eyes 

54 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

while  April  shut  hers.  One  poked  and  the  other  groped 
without  reaching  them;  both  opened  their  eyes.  April  found 
the  sheaf,  ran  her  hand  along  it,  and  pulled  out  an  envelop. 

"There!" 

"Oh,  let's  see  what  it  is!"  cried  Mrs.  Summerlin,  reading 
aloud  as  April  read  aloud,  and  pushing  her  index-finger 
along  the  lines:  "'Dear  Madam:  Having  heard  of  your  good 
— opportunity  of  a  lifetime.' "  April  lifted  her  mother's  finger. 
" 'Did  you  know  that  the  ocean  is  full  of  gold?  Instead  of 
digging  shafts  in  mountains,  it  is  only  necessary  to1 — move 
your  finger,  mother — 'to  dredge  the  ocean  and  run  the  water 
through  a  strainer  to  obtain  fabulous  wealth.  .  .  .  We  can 
offer  you  a  Jew  shares  of  either  the  common  or  the  preferred 
stock!'" 

"It  sounds  wonderful.   I  like  gold !"  Mrs.  Summerlin  cried. 

"I  prefer  the  preferred  stock,"  said  April,  solemnly. 

Her  mother  agreed:  "Oh  yes,  we  shouldn't  like  to  put 
Uncle  Randolph's  money  into  anything  common.  And  you 
see  they  guarantee  a  hundred  per  cent.  That's  nice!" 

Mr.  Kellogg,  who  had  watched  the  affair  with  a  nursery 
smile,  broke  in  fretfully: 

"  My  dear  ladies !  These  things  are  all  cheats  and  swindles. 
Anything  that  offers  such  profit  is  more  than  suspicious. 
You've  thrown  the  wrong  letters  away.  Put  these  in  the 
fire — or  you  might  as  well  put  your  money  there." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  gave  a  cry  of  anguish  at  this  cynicism. 

4 '  Then  how  on  earth  are  we  going  to  invest  it  ?"  she  pleaded. 

Kellogg  felt  that  his  time  had  come.     He  said : 

"I  hesitate  to  advise  you,  but  if  you  really  want  my  ad 
vice — well,  there  is  one  sure-fire,  gilt-edge  proposition  on  the 
market.  It  is  bound  to  net  you  between  fifteen  and  twenty 
per  cent,  a  year." 

"How  much  is  that?"  asked  Mrs.  Summerlin. 

"Fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  as  the  case 
may  be." 

April  protested:  "But  I  thought  we  were  going  to  be 
rich,  Mr.  Kellogg.  Mr.  Clyde  said  he  could  make  us  rich." 

"Hugo  Clyde?"  Kellogg  demanded,  and  when  April 
nodded,  he  sneered,  "Humph!  He's  a  stock-broker!" 

' '  You  see !    I  told  you  so , "  said  Mrs .  Summerlin .    But  April 
was  miffed  enough  to  say: 
5  55 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Funny!  When  I  mentioned  you  he  said:  'Kellogg! 
Humph!  He's  a  promoter!'" 

Kellogg  turned  so  purple  that  April  was  afraid  he  would 
fall  down  and  die  of  apoplexy  on  the  spot. 

"Is  that  so  awful?"  she  gasped.  "I'm  terribly  sorry. 
Please  forgive  me." 

Kellogg  was  heartbrokenly  gracious,  but  he  needed  a  deal 
of  comforting,  and  he  declined  to  mention  his  gilt-edged 
proposition.  They  were  still  trying  to  console  him  when 
Mr.  Clyde  was  announced  on  the  telephone.  Mrs.  Sum- 
merlin  was  for  sending  him  away,  but  Kellogg  urged: 

"Talk  to  him,  by  all  means;  but  remember,  he's  a  plunger. 
Now  I  believe  in  being  a  little  wary.  My  name  is  Kenneth 
Kellogg;  they  call  me  Kautious  and  Konservative — you  see, 
two  K's!  Ha-ha!— see?" 

"I  see,"  said  April.  "But  Mr.  Clyde  seems  to  be  very 
charming." 

"He  has  to  be,"  said  Kellogg-  "That's  his  game.  He  goes 
about  luring  people.  Those  Wall  Street  men  spend  half 
their  time  making  friends  for  the  one  purpose  of  decoying 
them  into  their  webs." 

The  bell  cut  short  his  indictment  of  that  infinitely  indicted 
street.  Pansy  admitted  Mr.  Clyde,  who  looked  the  broker 
somehow,  though  there  is  no  end  to  the  variety  of  brokers. 
He  was  young,  glossy,  tailory,  and  as  alert  as  a  sparrow. 
He  brought  no  flowers  but  his  own  gay  presence.  He  greeted 
April  with  easy  admiration  and  took  his  presentation  to 
Mrs.  Summerlin  with  cheerful  grace*.  It  was  only  when  he 
saw  Kellogg's  sultry  rotundity  that  he  lost  his  effulgence. 
He  recovered  his  manner  at  once,  and  asked  with  grinning 
impudence : 

"How  long  have  you  been  here?" 

"Half  an  hour,"  said  Kellogg. 

Clyde  pulled  a  long  face  and  groaned:  "'Tis  enough. 
He's  got  all  you've  got.  I'll  be  going." 

"Oh!  we  haven't  decided  anything  yet,"  April  interposed. 
"I  wouldn't  let  mother  decide  till  she  talked  to  you." 

"Ah!  I  breathe  again." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  felt  called  upon  to  sober  his  too  flippant 
manner.  "I  may  as  well  warn  you,  Mr.  Clyde,  that  I  have 
made  up  my  mind  to  keep  out  of  Wall  Street." 

56 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

"Then  there's  no  use  of  my  trying  to  change  it,"  said 
Clyde,  always  the  good  loser;  he  had  had  a  lot  of  practice  in 
losing. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  offended.  "You  mean  that  I  am 
not  open  to  reason?  Just  to  prove  it,  I'll  let  you  con 
vince  me." 

"Mrs.  Summerlin!"  Kellogg  gasped.  Mrs.  Summerlin 
finished  her  sentence  with  crushing  gravity: 

" — if  your  arguments  are  sound." 

Kellogg  grumbled,  "That's  all  they  are — sound!"  But  he 
did  not  wait  for  Clyde  to  get  the  first  attention  of  the  lambs. 
He  proceeded  to  spread  out  his  own  wares: 

"  Now  I  offer  these  ladies  a  chance  to  buy  into  a  legitimate 
enterprise,  something  solid." 

"Such  as?"    Clyde  grinned  expectantly. 

"Community  houses,  the  latest  development  in  social 
evolution,"  said  Kellogg,  as  if  he  were  reeling  off  a  memorized 
prospectus.  "People  used  to  live  in  caves,  then  in  houses, 
then  in  rented  apartments.  The  servant  problem  is  the  most 
terrible  problem  of  modern  life.  Cooks  are  paid  like  bank 
presidents,  and  they  demand  their  own  maids.  They  fight 
with  all  the  other  servants. 

"In  recent  years  people  have  been  putting  up  apartment- 
houses  in  which  each  tenant  owns  his  own  apartment— just 
as  if  they  put  their  private  houses  on  top  of  one  another, 
or  as  if  the  streets  ran  up  and  down  instead  of  east  and 
west  or  north  and  south.  Several  of  these  buildings  have 
made  fortunes  for  their  first  owners.  The  apartments  can 
always  be  rented  for  so  much  that  in  a  few  years  they  pay 
for  themselves;  the  rest  is  velvet. 

"But  still  the  servant  problem  remains.  The  new  stroke 
of  genius  is  to  combine  the  hotel  with  the  home — the  ad 
vantages  of  both,  the  faults  of  neither.  A  common  kitchen 
cooks  for  all  the  families.  You  can  do  your  own  marketing, 
or  not,  as  you  please.  You  order  your  meal,  and  the  corpora 
tion  cooks  and  serves  it.  The  corporation  employs  the 
servants  and  takes  all  the  trouble  off  your  mind.  The  corpcn 
ration  provides  the  housemaids,  chambermaids,  valets,  re 
frigerators,  vacuum-cleaners,  kitchen  utensils,  chefs,  waiters, 
porters,  everything,  everybody!  It  is  heaven  on  earth  at 
last! 

57 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Imagine,  Mrs.  Summerlin  and  Miss  Sutnmerlin,  that 
you  owned  this  beautiful  apartment!  You  would  pay  no 
rent.  You  could  go  away  for  the  summer  or  travel  during 
the  winter,  and  make  enough  money  to  keep  you  in  luxury. 
By  putting  your  money  into  several  apartments  and  renting 
them  you  would  have  an  income  for  life.  You  would  be 
landlords  in  a  royal  sense  and  live  prosperously  ever  after 
ward.  What  do  you  think  of  the  picture?" 

"It  is  certainly  beautifully  painted,"  said  Mrs.  Summerlin, 
dazzled  by  the  vision.  "It  would  be  wonderful  to  own  so 
much  property,  wouldn't  it,  April?" 

"Wonderful,"  said  April. 

Clyde  felt  that  his  customers  were  being  kidnapped.  He 
broke  in: 

"But  how  long  will  it  take  to  finish  all  these  heavenly 
homes?  You'd  have  to  wait  for  years,  perhaps,  before  you 
could  realize  a  penny.  Building  materials  and  labor  are 
higher  than  they've  ever  been  in  human  history,  and  harder 
to  get."  He  turned  to  Kellogg.  "And  once  their  money  is 
in,  it's  in,  isn't  it?" 

Kellogg  resented  the  satanic  sneer  at  his  glowing  work 
of  art.  He  snapped: 

"Of  course!    Put  it  in  and  forget  it." 

"Forget  it?"  laughed  Clyde.  " Kiss  it  good-by !  I  say  put 
it  in  Wall  Street  and  watch  it." 

Now  Kellogg  laughed.  "Watch  it?  It's  gone  while  you're 
batting  your  eyes." 

'Not  if  you  buy  outright  and  wait  for  a  rise." 
'You  see,  he  says  wait,  too,"  Kellogg  cried. 
'But  you  can  always  cash  in,"  Clyde  protested.    "Within 
twenty-four  hours  you  can  realize." 

'If  you'll  stand  a  loss  or  take  a  tiny  profit." 
'If  you  want  quicker  and  bigger  returns,"  Clyde  urged, 
"buy  on  a  margin." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  spoke  up  eagerly:  "Oh,  do  explain  that 
margin  to  me.  It  isn't  anything  like  the  selvage?" 

"Not  exactly,"  said  Clyde,  taking  an  envelop  and  a  pencil 
from  his  pockets,  "but  it's  very  simple.  Now,  for  example, 
suppose  steel  is  quoted  at  forty-nine — " 

While  he  fascinated  Mrs.  Summerlin,  Kellogg  turned  dis 
mally  to  April: 

58 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

"You  see — he's  hypnotizing  your  mother.  That's  his 
business." 

"He's  not  hypnotizing  me,"  said  April.  "I  rather  like 
that  own-your-own-home-your-own-self  idea.  I  might  be — " 
She  was  going  to  say  "getting  married  soon,"  but  she  pre 
ferred  to  keep  that  dream  to  herself.  She  was  wakened  from 
it  by  her  mother's: 

"Oh,  I  see!  It's  very  simple.  I  never  understood  margins 
before.  Aren't  they  lovely?  Well,  April,  I  am  convinced 
that  you  were  right.  Wall  Street  is  our  street.  It's  been 
dreadfully  slandered." 

"No,  mother,"  said  April,  "I'm  convinced  I  was  wrong. 
You  were  right." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  declined  to  be  put  in  the  right  against 
her  mood 

"No,  I'm  for  Wall  Street.  I'm  a  bear — or  do  I  mean  the 
other  animal?" 

Kellogg  forgot  his  suavity.  He  sniffed  like  the  bull  she 
dared  not  mention. 

"Wall  Street?   Why,  they  fleece  lambs  like  you  in  droves." 

"But  we  shouldn't  be  lambs,"  Mrs.  Summerlin  retorted. 
"We'd  be  margins." 

"People  drop  a  million  in  a  day  there  on  margins,"  Kellogg 
persisted. 

April  had  an  inspiration  born  of  her  thought  of  a  home. 
She  murmured: 

"Perhaps  we'd  better  not  go  into  either  scheme  just  yet, 
mother.  We'd  better  wait  for  Bob." 

"Oh!  of  course,  Bob!"  acceded  Mrs.  Summerlin,  already 
dizzy  from  the  height  of  her  financial  upshoot. 

Kellogg  and  Clyde  glared  at  each  other  in  common  dis 
comfiture  like  two  pickpockets  who  find  themselves  working 
the  same  side  of  the  street. 

"And  who's  Bob?"  Kellogg  grumbled. 

"He's  my — he's  a  boyhood  friend  of  mine,"  said  April. 

"But  does  he  know  money?"  Clyde  asked. 

"Why,  he's  just  come  into  ten  thousand  dollars!" 

Both  Kellogg  and  Clyde  had  the  same  happy  thought — 
another  come-on!  Both  gasped: 

"Where  is  he?" 

"Heaven  knows,"  April  sighed.  "He  is  still  in  France,  I 

59 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

reckon.  But  he'll  be  back  one  of  these  days,  and  I  think 
we'll  just  put  off  any  decision  till  he  gets  here.  Don't  you 
agree  with  me,  mother?" 

"Perfectly,  honey." 

There  seemed  nothing  more  for  Kellogg  and  Clyde  to 
accomplish  by  lingering.  Each  sought  the  victim  he  had 
played  most  patiently. 

Kellogg  smothered  Mrs.  Summerlin's  slim  hand  in  his 
pillowy  palm  and  murmured: 

"By  all  means,  take  your  time,  Mrs.  Summerlin.  But 
don't  do  anything  final  till  you  consult  me.  Remember  that 
your  welfare  is  very  close  to  my  heart — very  close,  my  dear 
Mrs.  Summerlin." 

He  bent  and  kissed  one  knuckle  and  backed  into  April's 
statue  of  Bob,  setting  it  wavering  for  a  fall  that  April  pre 
vented  with  a  cry  of  fear. 

Mrs.  Summerlin's  gasp,  "Gre't  Heavens!"  was  hardly  so 
much  from  anxiety  for  the  statue  as  from  amazement  at 
Mr.  Kellogg's  fervor.  She  was  still  feeling  uncomfortable 
about  the  knuckles  as  the  flustered  Kellogg  groped  for  his 
hat  and  then  for  the  door-knob,  and  backed  out  into  a  tem 
porary  oblivion. 

In  the  meanwhile,  Clyde,  who  had  hastened  to  the  as 
sistance  of  April  and  caught  the  statue  in  his  hands,  was 
enjoying  an  unusual  privilege.  April  was  cleansing  his 
immaculate  fingers  of  the  oily  clay  with  her  own  apron. 

The  warmth  of  her  hand  and  the  warmth  of  her  friendship 
as  she  thanked  him  for  his  promptness  set  his  brain  to  sim 
mering,  and  he  ventured  to  breathe  into  the  hair  of  her  down- 
bent  head: 

"Is  it  asking  too  much,  Miss  Summerlin,  to  ask  you  to 
let  me  meet  Bob,  as  you  call  him?" 

"No,  indeed,"  said  April.  "He'd  be  grateful  for  your 
kindness  to  us,  I'm  sure." 

"That  kindness  is  based  on  a  deep  personal  affec — interest, 
Miss  April.  I  don't  know  who  Bob  is — is  he  a  relative?" 

"Well,  he  may  be — by  marriage." 

"Oh,  you're  leaving  your  heart  to  Bob,  too?" 

April  laughed  uncomfortably.  "He  has  an  option  on  it — 
or  a  margin,  or  whatever  you  call  it." 

This  was  a  great  shock  to  Mr.  Clyde.  But  he  had  heard 

60 


MONEY  COMES   IN 

of  betrothals  as  well  as  of  financial  deals  that  fell  through, 
and  so  he  left  a  sort  of  romance-card  on  her: 

"In  any  case,  my  advice  would  always  be  based  on  more 
than  a  business  interest  in  you.  A  man  wouldn't  deceive 
a  woman  that  he  loved,  now,  would  he?" 

"It  has  been  done,  I  believe,"  said  April,  lightly  but 
grimly. 

"Er — well,  possibly;  but  I  wouldn't.  Good-by,  then, 
till  I  hear  from  you.  Good-by,  Mrs.  Summerlin.  Good-by. 
Good-by." 

And  he  was  gone. 

The  cynicism  of  April's  that  had  put  him  to  flight  was 
really  directed  toward  her  uncertainty  of  Bob.  She  wondered 
why  he  lingered  still  among  those  sirens  of  France.  In  the 
late  afternoon  paper  she  saw  his  name  among  the  arrivals 
on  a  transport  that  morning.  This  confirmed  her  fear  that 
he  had  ceased  to  care  for  her. 


CHAPTER  IX 

BOB,  fretting  bitterly  at  April's  indifference  to  his  return 
from  the  fields  of  death,  was  sent  to  Camp  Mills.  And 
there  he  met  Claudia  Reece,  who  had  motored  over  to  see 
her  major-general,  for  whom  she  had  been  shipped  out  of 
France. 

The  major-general  pointed  out  Jimmy  Dryden  and  Bob 
Taxter  as  two  of  his  ship-companions,  and  Claudia  did  not 
hesitate  to  run  out  and  seize  Bob  and  introduce  herself  as 
April's  friend.  She  was  really  counting  on  having  Jimmy 
Dryden  presented  to  her.  She  counted  on  herself  to  do  the 
rest. 

But  Bob  went  up  in  the  air  so  far  at  the  mention  of  April's 
name  that  Jimmy  got  away.  Bob  frankly  confessed  his 
heartbreak  at  April's  failure  to  answer  his  wireless,  and 
Claudia  said  that  April  had  telephoned  that  very  morning 
bemoaning  her  failure  to  hear  from  Bob. 

Claudia  gave  him  April's  telephone  numbers  at  home  and 
at  the  headquarters  of  the  Motor  Corps,  and  Bob  ran  for 
the  nearest  booth,  leaving  Claudia  to  go  back  to  her 
disprized  major-general. 

By  and  by  Bob  had  April  on  the  wire.  They  seemed  to 
be  as  close  as  Pyramus  and  Thisbe.  The  chink  was  too 
narrow  and  too  deep  to  kiss  through,  but  they  poured  out 
love-calls  across  the  wire,  heedless  of  Central's  burning 
ears. 

Bob  vowed  that  he  would  either  get  leave  of  absence  for 
the  next  day  or  go  A.  W.  O.  L.,  and  they  agreed  to  take  lunch 
together.  She  would  have  received  him  at  home,  but  she 
did  not  want  to  have  her  mother  hanging  round  at  the 
first  meeting,  and  they  appointed  the  lobby  of  the  Com 
modore  as  their  trysting-place. 

The  next  noon  April  found  the  huge  palm-filled  patio 
of  the  lobby  a  viscid  ooze  of  men  in  uniforms,  uniforms  at- 

62 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

tached  to  girls,  and  old  women  and  old  men.  A  few  parents 
were  there,  their  eyes  shining  with  pride,  rejoicing  in  the 
luck  that  gave  them  back  their  sons. 

It  touched  April  to  tears  to  see  the  meetings  of  some  of  the 
people. 

Here  was  an  old  father  waiting  with  his  daughter-in-law 
and  a  baby.  Up  the  steps  came  loping  a  soldier. 

There  were  snickers,  giggles,  mumblings  of  trivial  words, 
embraces  snatched  in  embarrassment,  quickly  to  escape  ob 
servation.  These  souls  had  known  the  noblest  experiences. 
They  had  given  their  man  to  their  country.  It  had  taken 
him,  drilled  him,  worked  him,  dressed  him,  shipped  him 
overseas,  and  flung  him  as  a  mere  missile  at  the  enemy's 
guns.  They  must  have  suffered  the  bitterest  woes.  And  the 
man  had  gone  down  into  the  pit  of  misery,  for  April  could 
see  the  wound  chevrons  on  his  sleeve  and  the  little  cross 
swinging  above  his  breast-pocket. 

The  experience  was  inspiring,  but  the  words  wanted.  The 
father,  made  a  child  again,  cuffed  his  son  as  if  his  son  were 
an  elder  brother,  and  nudged  the  wife  as  if  she  were  another 
urchin,  and  stammered: 

"Well,  it's  kind  of  nice  to  see  the  boy  back,  ain't  it?" 

And  the  wife  groaned,  "I  should  say  it  was!" 

And  the  hero  said,  "That's  some  baby,  if  you  ask  me." 

And  the  baby  howled. 

April  could  not  help  seeing  that  the  old  man  chewed 
tobacco;  the  hero's  uniform  looked  as  if  he  had  slept  in  it; 
the  wife  had  a  few  teeth  missing,  and  one  gold  crown  that 
flashed  and  vanished  unpleasantly  as  her  grin  waxed  or  waned. 
And  the  baby  had  prickly  heat  and  would  have  been  the  better 
for  a  change  of  linen. 

They  had  sounded  the  heights  and  depths  of  glory  and 
fear.  And  they  were  all  uncomfortable  in  the  consummation. 
They  had  known  just  what  to  do  in  war-time;  but  what  was 
to  be  done  with  the  peace? 

April,  who  had  been  dreaming  of  statues  to  commemorate 
the  great  days  and  wondering  what  figure  of  allegory  could 
be  splendid  enough,  shuddered  at  the  dismal  realism. 

There  Bob  was,  coming  up  the  steps  with  two  or  three 
other  officers.  She  noted  how  browner  and  bigger  he  was, 
how  less  boyish,  how  well  he  had  taken  care  of  himself,  and 

63 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

how  unnecessary  she  had  been  to  his  triumph.  She  felt 
afraid  of  him. 

He  did  not  recognize  her  at  first  in  her  Motor  Corps 
clothes.  She  had  to  call  his  name  to  catch  his  eye.  Then 
he  darted  to  her  with  a  loud  guffaw  of  surprise. 

He,  too,  used  the  most  commonplace  words  imaginable. 

"April!  Well,  well!  April!  Golly!  How  are  you, 
anyhow?" 

He  flung  out  his  arms  and  would  have  swept  her  in.  But 
she  dodged  him  and  could  have  beaten  herself  for  it  an 
instant  later.  His  lips  came  just  close  enough  to  hers  to 
assure  her  that  he  had  had  a  drink.  That  might  have  ex 
plained  the  fierce  glare  of  rebuke  that  hardened  his  eyes  for 
a  moment.  She  had  disappointed  him.  His  soul  had  dwelt 
long  on  this  blissful  shock  of  reunion.  But  he  understood 
her  timidity,  on  second  thought,  and  liked  her  perhaps  a 
little  better  for  being  more  girlishly  shy  than  she  looked  in 
her  martial  garb.  He  turned  to  one  of  his  companions. 

"This  is  Jimmy  Dryden,  the  best  ever.  Miss  Summerlin, 
permit  me  to  present  Captain  Dryden.  This  is  April, 
Jimmy — beaucoup  fille,  eh?  je  dirais  she  is,  quoi?" 

While  Jimmy  bowed  over  April's  hand,  Bob  rattled  on: 

"Old  air-pal  of  mine,  Jimmy — used  to  go  out  and  bring 
down  a  couple  of  Boches  for  breakfast  every  morning." 

Jimmy  ignored  the  flattery  and  as  usual  said  the  right 
thing: 

"Well,  I've  brought  Bob  back  to  you,  Miss  Summerlin. 
He's  been  eating  his  heart  out  for  you.  I  don't  wonder.  But 
you're  making  no  mistake  in  Bob,  either.  He's  one  genuine 
little  gimper,  if  ever  there  was  one." 

"What's  a  gimper?"  said  April. 

But  Jimmy  was  being  dragged  away  to  meet  the  girl  of 
another  fellow,  and  he  did  not  answer  the  question.  Bob 
did  not  seem  too  anxious  to  keep  Jimmy  on  the  string,  but 
deserted  him  among  friends  as  he  had  not  deserted  him  among 
enemies. 

Bob  slipped  his  arm  through  April's  and  clasped  her  hand 
in  his,  pressed  her  elbow  against  his  side,  and  with  idolatry 
in  his  devouring  eyes  murmured,  poetically: 

"Let's  eat." 

April  laughed  at  the  boyishness  of  this.  Perhaps  she 

64 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

prized  him  more  as  a  cub  than  if  he  had  improvised  a  rondeau 
for  her.  They  found  every  table  occupied  and  a  queue  at 
every  dining-room.  April  said: 

"Wouldn't  you  rather  come  home  with  me?" 

"You  bet!"  he  groaned,  not  quite  daring  to  voice  his 
thought.  "Anything  to  be  alone  with  you." 

She  fetched  a  chaperon  for  this  wild  fancy  at  once: 
"Mamma  is  dying  to  see  you." 

There  was  a  hint  of  forcing*  in  his  polite  enthusiasm: 
"Fine!  How  is  the  old  girl?" 

April  laughed  again.  It  was  pleasant  to  see  through  his 
simple  moods.  It  was  very  comfortable  to  have  him  so 
transparent.  Later  she  would  find  curtains  coming  down 
as  she  peeked  into  various  windows  of  his  soul.  That  would 
be  more  exciting,  but  not  at  all  pleasant. 

They  ran  down  the  steps  and  out  into  the  street.  The 
starter  whistled  up  a  taxicab.  The  day  was  warm,  and  the 
cab  had  the  top  let  down.  Bob  was  never  more  fearless  than 
when  he  marched  past  it  and  hoisted  April  into  the  next 
one,  which  was  closed. 

April  blushed  at  the  manifest  intention  and  felt  that  her 
dignity  was  compromised. 

"  Why  did  you  do  that?"  she  demanded  as  the  cab  jounced 
away. 

"For  this!"  Bob  muttered  as  he  put  out  his  arms  and, 
despite  her  mutiny  and  heedless  of  the  crowded  street, 
clenched  her  in  a  fierce  embrace,  thrilled  to  find  her  so  round 
and  soft  and  lithely  feminine — all  the  more  thrilled  because 
she  fought  him.  It  was  as  if  a  captive  wild  swan  struggled 
to  escape,  and  it  pleased  him  to  be  compelled  to  put  forth 
all  his  strength  to  hold  her. 

He  would  not  let  her  go  until  she  gave  up  and  took  his 
kiss  full  on  her  lips.  He  had  not  known  that  lips  could  mean 
so  much.  It  seemed  that  all  of  her  was  there,  soul  and  body 
and  all,  and  all  his.  Her  mouth  was  like  a  flower  on  fire. 

He  fell  back  with  a  sigh  of  ecstasy.  "That  was  worth 
fighting  for." 

April  was  one  confusion,  amazed  at  him  and  at  herself, 
and  she  had  to  be  angry  in  self-defense  against  her  own 
rapture. 

"You've  learned  a  few  things  in  France,  I  see." 

65 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Bob  was  aghast  at  such  seeming  cynicism.  "April!"  he 
gasped.  Trying  to  justify  herself  for  the  atrocious  sacrilege, 
she  made  it  worse: 

"How  many  others  have  you  had  in  your  arms  since  I 
saw  you  last?" 

Down  went  a  curtain — bang!  His  quick  temper  leaped 
to  arms.  He  had  learned  to  meet  attack  with  attack. 

"The  same  to  you,"  he  snapped.  "And  how  many  of 
them?" 

She  wanted  to  hurt  him,  and  she  knew  how. 

She  taunted  him:    "Don't  you  wish  you  knew?" 

With  the  strange  perversity  of  lovers,  or  the  divine  cor 
rection  that  checks  them  when  they  climb  too  near  heaven, 
they  had  managed  to  get  back  to  the  bleak  earth  from  the 
pink  clouds  in  a  hurry. 

They  rode  the  rest  of  the  way  in  wretched  silence,  their 
thoughts  veering  and  darting  like  the  taxicab  that  bore 
them. 


CHAPTER  X 

'""PHEY  were  a  miserable  and  chastened  pair  when  they 
1  reached  April's  home.  As  they  went  into  the  lobby  they 
encountered  the  old  negro  whom  April  had  seen  on  the  day 
of  the  false  armistice.  He  was  loafing  by  the  desk  and  was 
not  burdened  with  his  vacuum-cleaning  machinery.  April 
did  not  recognize  him  till  he  grinned,  brushed  his  hat  off  his 
head,  and  bowed  very  low. 

"Fine  day,  missy,  fine  day!"  He  laughed  as  if  this  fact 
were  the  most  amusing  thing  in  the  world. 

"Yes,  very  nice,"  said  April,  as  if  it  were  the  most  dismal 
fact  imaginable.  She  moved  on  to  the  elevator,  but  the  old 
man  came  slip-slopping  after  her. 

"'Scuse  me,  missy;  but  elevato'-boy  been  tellin'  me  you 
allowed  you  might  need  me  some  day.  In  case  you  does, 
year's  ma  card." 

He  offered  her  a  pasteboard  which  she  took  with  a  little 
smile. 

"Thanks,  Uncle." 

"Dat's  it— 'Uncle'!"  the  old  man  whooped. 

"Who's  all  that?"  said  Bob  as  the  elevator  went  up. 

"Some  relative  of  yours,"  said  April,  handing  him  the 
card.  Bob  read  it  with  a  smile  that  would  not  stay  on: 

PROFESSOR  ZEBULON  TAXTER 
PRACTICAL  VACUUM  CLEANER 

Apartments  and  houses  cleaned  artistic  and  sanitery. 
Rates  reasonable  Special  rates  for  regular  costumers 
1312  West  53rd  street.  Also  rugs  cleaned. 

Bob  returned  the  card  with  a  grimace  of  pain.  He  and 
April  were  incapable  of  gleaning  a  laugh  out  of  what  would 
have  set  them  off  insanely  in  a  more  cheerful  mood. 

Southerners  are  used  to  finding  their  lofty  names  worn 

67 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

by  the  lowly  descendants  of  slaves,  and  Bob  forgot  the  man 
and  his  business.  Even  Uncle  Zeb  did  not  dream  that  he 
was  drawing  nearer  and  nearer  to  his  prey. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  gathered  Bob  into  her  arms  and  gave 
him  a  motherly  welcome  that  had  him  purring  again.  He 
was  ready  to  forgive  April  now  and  she  to  be  forgiven;  but 
his  roving  eyes  caught  sight  of  the  new  clay  figure  she  had 
been  struggling  with. 

The  poor  girl  had  wanted  to  design  a  monument  for  Bob's 
own  superb  achievement  as  an  aviator.  She  had  planned  to 
show  him  as  a  modern  angel,  in  the  full  uniform  of  an  aviator 
with  a  pair  of  great  wings  added.  She  had  arrived  only  at 
the  crude  figure  of  a  man.  She  had  not  yet  reached  the 
point  for  adding  either  the  uniform  or  the  wings.  All  Bob 
saw  was  the  rough  outline  of  a  naked  man  in  green  clay  with 
the  muscles  laid  on  in  exaggerated  cords. 

Bob's  longing  to  keep  April  innocent  took  the  sardonic 
form  of  a  suspicious  challenge: 

"And  who  was  the  model  for  all  that?" 

And  her  anguish  at  his  insinuation  took  the  form  of  that 
taunting  refrain  of  hers: 

"Don't  you  wish  you  knew?" 

She  teased,  enraged,  and  fascinated  him  like  another 
Carmen  driving  her  soldier  into  a  complete  frenzy. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  gazed  at  them  aghast.  "Good  Lord! 
Are  you  two  children  fighting  again,  already?  Is  this  another 
of  those  false  armistices?" 

Bob  laughed  sheepishly.  "Oh  no!  No,  indeed,  Mrs. 
Summerlin.  I  was  only  wondering  who  posed  for  April's 
little  statue  there." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  ended  the  nonsense  with  a  word.  "Why, 
nobody  posed,  of  course!  Who'd  you  suppose  posed?  April 
has  been  puttering  away  at  that  for  months.  She  began  it 
one  day  when  she  had  one  of  her  premonitions  that  you 
had  been  killed  in  France.  She  called  you  an  angel  and  said 
she  was  going  to  make  a  gre't  monument  for  you.  And  I 
hope  you're  not  going  to — " 

Bob  did  not  wait  to  find  out  the  end  of  that  "going  to." 
He  broke  in: 

"Why,  of  course  not,  Mrs.  Summerlin!  I  was  just  think 
ing  it  was  so  fine  that  she  must  have  had  a  model." 

68 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

Bob  had  both  the  defects  of  his  qualities  and  the  qualities 
of  his  defects.  He  had  a  hair-trigger  temper,  and  he  shot 
off  accusations  point-blank,  but  he  was  just  as  quick  with 
his  apologies,  and  he  fairly  riddled  himself  with  them. 

"Aw,  April!"  he  pleaded.  "I'm  a  rotten,  low-down  hound, 
and  I  don't  see  why  you  allow  me  around  at  all.  It  was  just 
beautiful  of  you  to  think  of  me.  Only,  if  you  made  a  statue 
of  me,  it  ought  to  be  some  old  yella  coon-dog,  not  a  wonderful 
Apollo  like  that." 

April's  eyes  twinkled  with  tears  of  luxurious  forgiveness. 
"That's  all  right,  Bob.  Don't  think  anything  more  about 
it.  I  ought  to  have  put  it  out  of  sight  before  you  came  in." 

"Out  of  sight!"  cried  Bob.  "Well,  hardly!  When  you 
get  that  finished  I'm  going  to  have  it  cast  in  solid  gold  and 
set  up  in  Central  Park  somewhere.  It  will  make  that  Gen 
eral  Sherman  thing  look  like  a  cigar-Indian." 

"I  don't  care  what  you  do  to  that  old  villain,"  said  April, 
with  an  inherited  abomination  for  all  Northern  generals. 
"But  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens  is  a  little  above  my  rank." 

"Don't  you  believe  it,"  said  Bob.  "You're  lots  younger 
than  Saint-Gaudens  ever  was.  Go  right  ahead  with  your 
work,  and  as  soon  as  I  get  rich  I'll  show  some  of  these  people 
what  a  sculptor  you  are." 

"Speaking  of  getting  rich,"  said  Mrs.  Summerlm,  "have 
you  collected  your  legacy  yet?" 

"No.  I  haven't  had  time.  I  don't  even  know  who  the 
trustee  is." 

"I  can  tell  you  all  that,  but  don't  be  in  a  nurry.  If  your 
money  gives  you  one-tenth  as  much  trouble  as  ours  has, 
the  longer  you  put  off  getting  it  the  happier  you'll  be." 

"It's  just  about  one-tenth  as  much  as  yours,"  said  Bob, 
with  an  abject  meekness,  "so  I'd  only  have  one-tenth  the 
misery.  I'd  be  willing  to  risk  it." 

"You're  lucky,"  said  April. 

Bob  gave  her  a  look  that  confirmed  her  fears  of  his 
humiliation  in  the  discrepancy  between  their  fortunes. 

Pansy  came  in  with  a  new  batch  of  letters  sent  up  by  the 
postman.  She  greeted  Bob  as  if  he  were  a  child  of  her  own 
raising,  while  Mrs.  Summerlin  shuffled  the  letters  over  with 
a  groan.  Some  of  the  addresses  were  becoming  as  familiar 
as  old  boresome  neighbors  that  keep  dropping  in.  Some  of 

69 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

these  letters  were  from  investment-mongers  with  a  variety 
of  wares  to  recommend.  Some  of  them  were  the  next  in 
stallments  in  the  commercial  series  known  as  "follow-ups." 

Psychology,  psychoanalysis,  and  psychosynthesis,  like  all 
other  sciences  and  near  sciences,  have  been  gathered  in  by 
modern  business  men  who  love  the  big  words  and  the  hand 
some  disguises  of  ignorance  or  fraud  that  philosophy  affords. 

Advertising-matter  has  just  as  much  right  to  the  term 
"literature"  as  any  of  the  other  forms  of  fiction,  poetry,  and 
exhortation.  In  many  of  the  magazines  it  would  be  hard  to 
say  which  of  the  two  sections  shows  the  lesser  ability,  that 
mentioned  in  the  Table  of  Contents  or  that  mentioned  in  the 
Index  to  Advertisers. 

Those  who  maintain  that  letter-writing  is  a  lost  art  can 
never  have  been  caught  in  the  relentless  grindstones  of  the 
circularizing  mills. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  growing  a  bit  jaded  with  excess  of 
attention.  She  had  reached  the  point  in  advertisement- 
culture  that  one  reaches  who  reads  too  many  essays,  novels, 
criticisms,  sermons,  and  treatises:  the  same  formulas  had 
begun  to  grow  irksome;  the  recurrence  of  pattern  had  caused 
the  whole  art  to  be  suspect. 

She  turned  to  Bob  now: 

"You're  just  in  time  to  save  us  from  going  mad,  Bob. 
We  haven't  invested  our  money  yet,  and  the  more  we  study 
the  problem  the  less  we  know  about  it.  Everybody  warns 
us  against  something,  and  somebody  warns  us  against  every 
thing." 

April  spoke  up: 

"I've  about  decided  that  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  shut 
your  eyes  and  take  a  chance.  And  you  might  as  well  take 
a  long  one  while  you're  at  it." 

Bob  was  alarmed  at  this  manifestation  of  the  gambler 
spirit  in  his  chosen  helpmeet.  He  had  mocked  at  Jimmy 
Dryden's  conservative  advice  in  his  own  case,  but  he  was 
incapable  of  approving  April's  rashness  in  hers. 

"Oh  no!  No!"  he  protested.  "You've  got  to  be  mighty 
careful.  You  ought  to  put  your  money  in  something  safe 
and  sound." 

"Yes,  and  get  nothing  for  it,"  April  mocked.  "What's 
the  use  of  having  a  legacy  if  you  bury  it  in  a  napkin?  No, 

70 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

sir!  Me  for  at  least  one  good  splurge.  I  reckon  a  horse 
race  is  about  the  best  investment.  You  can  always  get  good 
odds,  and  you  can  always  get  a  little  excitement  out  of  it." 

"For  Heaven's  sake,  don't  go  mad!"  Bob  pleaded.  "What 
do  you  need  to  have  so  much  money  for?" 

"To  have  a  good  time  with,  of  course!"  said  April. 

It  still  shocks  men  to  see  their  nice  women  demanding 
a  good  time.  It  still  seems  that  a  good  woman  ought  not 
to  have  a  good  time;  she  ought  to  get  fun  enough  out  of  a 
modest  home,  her  own  fireside,  her  own  gas-stove,  or  at  most 
one  servant,  a  husband  to  mend  for  and  wait  for,  a  church 
to  go  to,  a  placid  garden,  and  in  due  season  a  flock  of  what 
are  somewhat  stickily  referred  to  as  "kiddies." 

Bob,  having  recently  returned  to  earth  from  the  serene 
and  womanless  cloud  battle-grounds,  was  dazed  to  behold 
how  womankind  had  changed  since  he  was  last  in  America. 
As  men  have  always  done,  he  was  shocked  by  what  has  always 
existed.  He  called  an  ancient  thing  a  new  thing  because  it 
was  new  to  his  ignorance.  He  had  just  discovered  it,  there 
fore  he  assumed  that  his  own  mother's  contemporaries  had 
been  innocent  of  it,  as  she  had  assumed  of  her  mother's 
contemporaries;  and  so  on  back. 

"Good  Lord!"  he  groaned.  "A  good  time!  She  wants  a 
good  time!  What's  the  world  coming  to?" 

April  was  not  depressed  by  Bob's  despair.    She  cried: 

"Look  at  old  Methusalem!  He  still  has  hair  and  teeth, 
and  he's  croaking  already.  I  suppose  you  are  going  to  put 
your  money  in  the  most  conservative  thing  there  is — the 
Fifth  Liberty  Loan,  no  doubt." 

Bob  answered  with  shameless  nobility.  "I  got  home  too 
late  for  the  drive,  or  I  probably  would  have.  I  bought  what 
I  could  out  of  my  pay." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  said:  "We  bought  several  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  bonds  just  to  help  the  country  out;  but — 
well,  what  are  you  planning  to  invest  in?  Maybe  we  could 
all  go  into  the  same  thing." 

Bob  would  not  for  worlds  have  confessed  that  he  had 
chosen  the  Texas  oil  crop  as  his  Monte  Carlo.  He  evaded. 

"I'd  better  get  it  before  I  invest  it." 

April,  with  her  diabolic  insight,  seemed  to  see  through  him 
uncannily.    She  sniffed: 
6  7i 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"He's  going  to  sink  it  in  an  oil-well." 

The  start  Bob  gave  gave  her  a  hint  that  she  had  scored 
a  hit,  a  palpable  hit.  She  drove  the  point  home  again. 

"Come  on,  now,  'fess  up.  You've  got  a  kit-bag  full  of  oil 
advertisements,  and  you  dream  of  derricks  every  night." 

In  self-defense  Bob  turned  to  Mrs.  Summerlin.  "The  girl's 
gone  nutty  since  I  went  away." 

"I  know  it,"  said  Mrs.  Summerlin.  "I  can't  do  a  thing 
with  her.  You'll  have  to  take  her  in  hand  and  tame  her." 

April  laughed  so  outrageously  at  this  suggestion  that 
Bob  felt  his  heart  full  of  Petruchian  wrath.  He  vowed  that 
he  would  cow  this  shrew  somehow  for  her  own  good.  The 
sight  of  his  black  menace  set  her  off  still  further.  She  was 
disgracefully  hilarious,  not  the  least  the  lady.  She  seemed 
to  take  so  much  joy  in  his  discomfiture  that  she  reinfected 
herself  with  her  own  laughter  till  the  tears  were  pouring 
down  her  cheeks. 

It  is  strange  how  people's  souls  can  fight  in  the  air  far 
above  their  spoken  words,  supporting  themselves  on  their 
own  velocity  and  turning  mental  somersaults  without  once 
touching  the  ground.  When  April  had  worn  herself  out  with 
her  unseemly  mockery  she  mopped  her  eyes  and  sobbed:  - 

"Let  me  know  what  oil  company  you've  decided  to  put 
your  money  in,  Bob,  and  I'll  go  halvers  with  you.  The 
scheme  is  just  nutty  enough  to  appeal  to  a  squirrel  like  me." 

Bob  was  quite  tied  up  now.  It  seemed  indecent  to  put 
his  fortune  into  oil  with  the  idea  of  making  enough  money 
to  put  him  far  ahead  of  April  in  wealth.  In  certain  aspects, 
the  masculine  obligation  to  be  richer  than  his  chosen  wife 
did  not  look  altogether  handsome.  It  would  be  hard  per 
fectly  to  justify  his  choice  of  oil  as  the  best  investment  for 
his  own  money  and  his  denial  of  the  same  opportunity  to 
April  for  hers.  Yet  if  he  let  her  in  on  the  field,  she  would 
either  lose  her  money  or,  what  was  worse  in  a  way,  get  still 
more  richer  than  he  was.  If  she  lost  her  money,  he  could 
take  care  of  her  somehow;  but  if  she  increased  her  financial 
lead  over  him,  he  would  lose  her. 

He  was  in  such  a  mess  of  quandaries  that  he  did  not  know 
which  way  to  turn  except  toward  the  door.  He  was  in  a 
rage  of  resentment  at  April  for  having  any  money  to  disturb 
their  future  with.  Why  did  she  have  to  go  and  get  herself 

72 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

mentioned  in  the  will,  anyway?  Most  intolerable  of  all 
was  the  idea  that  his  financial  activities  should  have  to  be 
circumscribed  by  hers.  Either  to  go  into  oil  in  company 
with  her  or  unbeknownst  to  her  was  difficult  now,  but  to 
let  her  keep  him  out  of  it  by  her  mere  ridicule  was  to  sur 
render  all  manhood.  He  sought  cover  in  dignity,  looked  at  his 
watch,  gave  a  start,  and  said: 

"I'm  sorry,  but  I'm  late  to  an  engagement.    It's  too  bad." 

April  snickered.  "It's  too  bad  you're  such  a  bad  actor. 
But  don't  let  us  detain  you." 

That  made  it  almost  impossible  to  go.  April  kept  re 
minding  him  of  the  old  saw;  she  was  just  such  a  woman  as 
he  "could  neither  live  with  nor  live  without." 

He  lavished  all  his  sweetness  on  Mrs.  Summerlin. 

"You  have  my  sympathy,"  he  said.  "That  child  will 
drag  all  our  gray  hairs  in  sorrer  to  the  grave." 

And  April  fiendishly  used  the  only  imaginable  method  of 
confusing  him  further.  She  squeezed  his  formal  hand  and 
murmured  with  lips  as  tempting  as  a  rose's  petals  beaded 
with  morning  dew: 

"You're  a  precious  darling,  Bob,  and  I  adore  you." 

Bob  quoted  in  torment:  "April,  I  don't  know  whether 
to  kiss  you  or  kill  you." 

"Why  not  both?"  she  said. 

He  did  neither.  He  left  her.  But  all  the  way  to  the  sub 
way  he  was  wondering  what  a  fellow  could  really  do  with 
such  a  girl. 

And  both  April  and  he  had  forgotten  that  she  had  invited 
him  to  lunch.  She  remembered  it  with  a  gasp  and  rushed 
to  the  elevator.  It  had  taken  him  to  the  nether  regions. 
She  ran  back  to  telephone  the  doorman.  By  the  time  she 
got  him  Bob  had  left  the  building.  She  ran  to  the  window, 
leaned  out,  called.  But  he  did  not  hear. 

She  watched  him  striding  along  and  sighed,  "You  damned 
old  angel,  you!"  And  her  tears  fell  seven  stories. 


CHAPTER  XI 

BOB  was  in  such  a  state  of  soul-curdle  that  he  got  all  the 
way  back  to  Camp  Mills  before  he  suffered  that  pecul 
iar  alteration  that  we  call  a  change  of  mind,  or  a  change  of 
heart.  As  soon  as  he  was  in  the  tented  streets  he  felt  that 
he  had  been  contemptibly  rude  and  perfectly  imbecile.  He 
hastened  to  a  pay-station  and  called  up  April  to  perform 
one  of  his  apologetic  grovelings. 

April  had  recovered  sufficiently  from  her  heartbreak  to 
eat  a  hearty  (as  we  say)  meal,  and  she  had  settled  down  to 
humdrum  when  Bob's  voice  threw  her  into  the  state  of  frantic 
discontent  known  as  love.  She  talked  all  through  his  apolo 
gies,  conveying  apologies  of  her  own.  After  about  thirty 
cents'  worth  of  this  mutual  confession  and  absolution  at 
telephone  rates,  they  agreed  to  meet  the  day  after  to-morrow 
at  the  Commodore,  for  another  try  at  luncheon. 

This  reminded  Bob  that  he  had  not  eaten,  and  he  replen 
ished  his  stomach  at  the  post  exchange.  Then  he  attacked 
the  paper-work  stretching  between  him  and  his  release.  For 
several  hours  he  was  a  military  bookkeeping  machine.  In 
the  evening  he  attended  a  boxing-bout  between  soldiers  who 
beat  the  air  black  and  blue  and  occasionally  landed  on  each 
other. 

The  next  day  Jimmy  Dryden  tried  to  persuade  Bob  to 
go  with  him  to  the  Pershing  Club.  Bob  was  unaware  of 
this  social  center,  one  of  the  countless  amusement  factories 
for  the  soldiers  and  sailors. 

This  club  was  domiciled  in  the  building  once  fashionably 
sacred  to  Saint  Bartholomew's  Church,  which,  like  most 
New  York  churches,  kept  building  itself  statelier  mansions, 
and  had  now  moved  over  to  Park  Avenue.  Later  the  build 
ing  would  be  turned  into  a  Christian  Science  church,  but  for 
the  present  moment  it  was  an  information  bureau,  reading- 
room,  rendezvous,  and  dance-hall  for  officers  of  the  army, 

74 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

navy,  and  Marine  Corps.  Nearly  every  afternoon  some 
chaperon  brought  down  a  flock  of  maidens  who  busied  them 
selves  dancing  away  the  loneliness  of  the  officers. 

The  world  had  certainly  gone  a  long  way  in  one  direction 
or  another  when  ladies  of  the  highest  respectability  played 
shepherdess  to  droves  of  young  women,  corralled  them  in 
an  old  church,  and  made  them  dance  with  men  they  had 
never  seen  before. 

Jimmy  Dryden  emphasized  the  attraction  of  the  place  to 
Bob,  but  he  was  in  one  of  his  faithful  moods,  and  it  did  not 
seem  square  to  April.  But  what  he  said  was  that  he  had  to 
finish  his  reports.  He  slaved  over  them  all  day  and  late  at 
night,  and  the  next  morning  set  out  for  New  York  to  meet 
April. 

He  was  no  Orlando  to  keep  his  Rosalind  waiting  an  hour. 
He  was  thirty  minutes  ahead  of  time  at  the  hotel. 

A  major  of  ordnance  he  had  come  to  know  on  the  trans 
port  dropped  into  the  next  chair.  He  said  he  was  "waiting 
for  somebody,"  which  meant  a  woman,  of  course;  and  of 
course  she  was  late.  The  natural  topic  of  conversation  was, 
"When  do  you  get  out?" 

Bob  said  that  he  hoped  to  get  his  papers  within  a  week. 

"What  are  you  planning  to  do  when  you  leave  the  service?" 
said  Major  Brandegee.  "Go  back  to  your  old  job?" 

Bob's  old  job  was  being  a  jobless  graduate  from  the  V. 
M.  I.,  but  he  did  not  like  to  confess  to  such  juvenility, 
especially  to  a  superior  in  rank  and  one  with  the  condescend 
ing  manner  of  this  superior.  So  Bob  spoke  with  that  peculiar 
majesty  of  the  very  young  lifting  themselves  by  the  boot 
straps  of  their  expectations. 

' '  Oh,  no !  No,  no — not  at  all !  You  see,  Major,  I  came  into 
a  bit  of  money  while  I  was  overseas — a  legacy,  you  know; 
and  I've  got  to  put  it  to  work." 

"Ah!"  said  the  Major,  interested  at  once.  He  had  been 
in  cutlery,  and  he  was  not  averse  from  (or  to)  the  absorption 
of  some  new  capital  into  his  neglected  business. 

"Had  you  thought  of  going  into  the  steel  business?  I 
know  a  good  place  to  put  some  money  to  work,  where  it 
would  be  safe  and  sure  of  a  reasonable  return." 

Bob  dodged  this  cautiously  lowered  hook,  and  answered: 

"I've  about  made  up  my  mind  to  go  into  oil.  You  see, 

75 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

I  spent  several  months  in  Texas  when  I  was  learning  to  fly, 
and  I  feel  rather  at  home  in  the  state.  I  like  the  people, 
too — fine,  frank,  warm-hearted  people.  So  I  think  I  shall 
go  into  oil." 

"I  see,"  said  the  Major.    "A  bit  risky,  though." 

"Nothing  venture,  nothing  gain." 

"Don't  believe  everything  you  read  in  the  papers,"  said 
the  Major,  with  a  paternalism  that  Bob  found  offensive 

Bob  answered  with  veteran  ease:  "Oh  no — I'm  not  buy 
ing  by  mail." 

"Well,"  said  the  Major,  "I  wish  you  luck.  How  about 
a  little  drink  while  we're  waiting?" 

"I  always  obey  the  orders  of  my  superiors,"  said  Bob, 
with  delightful  subordination. 

"Then  we'll  report  at  the  firing-line,"  said  the  Major. 

The  two  old  war-horses  rose  and  moved  off  to  get  what 
liquor  the  barkeeper  would  slip  to  a  man  in  uniform. 

Bob  had  paid  no  heed  to  the  man  in  the  chair  next  to  his. 
But  as  he  marched  past  he  caught  a  glance  of  the  girl  in  the 
chair  next  to  that.  He  told  himself  that  she  was  quelque  fille! 

April's  misbehavior  had  given  him  the  right,  too,  to  notice 
whether  girls  were  pretty  or  not.  This  one's  glance  caught 
in  his  and  let  go  somewhat  as  two  flowers  blown  together 
slowly  disengage.  Bob  felt  a  slight  thrill  in  the  clash. 

He  had  not  forgotten  it  when  he  came  back  from  the 
firing-line  alone.  He  noted  with  a  bare  trace  of  regret  that 
the  girl  was  apparently  already  attached  to  a  soldier,  a 
large,  rough  fellow,  a  private,  far  too  homely  for  such  a 
beauty  as  she  was. 

It  gave  his  meditations  quite  a  jolt  when  the  soldier 
approached  him  and  raised  his  right  hand  quickly.  Bob 
wondered  if  the  fellow  were  going  to  strike  him  for  looking 
at  his  girl.  Private  soldiers  had  so  long  ago  ceased  to  salute 
officers  that  Bob  was  startled  when  he  saw  the  man's  hand 
going  to  his  own  cap  instead  of  to  Bob's  nose.  Bob  returned 
the  salute  with  a  wrist-snapping  jerk. 

"  I  beg  yo'  pahdon,  Cap'n,  but  could  I  ast  you  a  question?" 
the  soldier  inquired. 

"Certainly,"  replied  Bob,  with  graciousness  enough  to 
spread  over  to  the  anxious  girl  at  the  soldier's  side.  The 
private  went  on: 

76 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

"Didn't  I  meet  up  with  you  down  in  Texas,  suh?" 

"I  was  there,"  said  Bob,  wishing  the  wretch  would  have 
the  presence  of  mind  to  introduce  the  queen  at  his  elbow. 
The  private  grinned  and  turned  to  his  girl: 

"Didn't  I  tell  you?  I  nevah  forget  a  face.  Hit  was  in 
the  Rice  Hotel  at  Houston,  wasn't  it,  suh?" 

"I  was  there  several  times,"  said  Bob. 

"You  don't  reco'nize  me,  I  reckon,  because  I  didn't  have 
a  unifawm  on  then.  I  hadn't  joined  up  yet  when  I  met 
you.  I  was  a  gentleman  then,  and  I  hope  to  be  again,  as 
soon  as  I  can  get  my  discharge  papahs.  My  name  is  Yarmy, 
suh,  Joe  Yarmy." 

"Mine  is  Taxter,  Robert  Taxter,"  said  Bob. 

"That's  the  name  I  was  tryin'  to  think  of,"  said  Yarmy, 
turning  again  to  the  girl. 

"I  think  you  said  Taxta  the  fust  time,"  said  the  girl  in 
a  voice  of  amazing  sweetness  in  Bob's  ear. 

"Of  co'se,  but  I  can't  trust  ma  memory  since  I  was  gassed 
on  the  otha  side,"  said  Yarmy. 

"Oh!  you  were  gassed.    Too  bad!"  said  Bob. 

"Yessa,  the  Huns  got  me,  but  not  ontwell  I'd  got  a  passel 
of  them.  Down  in  Texas  we're  bawn  with  shootin'-irons 
in  ouah  hands  instead  of  gold  spoons.  But  as  I  was  tellin' 
Kate—" 

Bob  was  growing  desperate.  He  made  a  plunge  for  an 
introduction. 

"Your  sister,  I  suppose?" 

"Er — yes,  pahdon  me  for  not  interdoocin'  you." 

Bob  was  shocked  to  find  how  glad  he  was  that  the  girl 
was  not  Yarmy's  fiance'e,  as  he  had  feared.  Why  had  he 
feared?  Why  was  he  glad?  He  wondered,  but  he  could  not 
deny. 

There  was  something  about  the  honest  grip  Kate's  hand 
gave  his  that  reminded  him  of  Arthur  Chapman's  beautiful 
lyric  concerning  the  West  and  its  people: 

Out  where  the  smile  dwells  a  little  longer, 
Out  where  the  handclasp's  a  little  stronger, 
That's  where  the  West  begins. 

Writers  of  Western  stories  have  always  admitted  the  mys 
tic  superiority  of  Westerners  to  Easterners.  They  filled  their 

77 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

stories  with  Western  bad  men  and  bad  women,  but  while 
these  are  in  the  majority  in  the  stories,  they  do  not  affect 
the  theory,  somehow.  Only  heroes  count. 

For  the  moment  Bob  was  convinced  that  the  Southwest 
was  the  heart  of  the  country,  and  that  the  soil  of  Texas 
grew  an  extraordinarily  high  grade  of  human  produce. 

In  his  present  mood  of  revolt  from  April  with  her  sophis 
ticated  New-Yorky  ways,  her  artistic  faddishness,  her  dis 
respectful  habit  of  making  fun  of  him  all  the  time,  Bob  found 
an  extraordinary  charm  in  Kate  Yarmy's  manner.  She  was 
shy,  constrained,  evidently  a  little  afraid  of  metropolitan 
crowds  and  costumes;  and  yet  he  felt  sure  that  on  her  native 
soil  she  would  be  self-reliant,  intrepid,  a  true  ranchwoman. 
She  could  doubtless  ride  a  bucking  bronco  to  submission ;  no 
doubt  she  wore  modest  divided  skirts  instead  of  the  shameless 
and  unconcealed  riding-breeches  that  April  flaunted  in  Cen 
tral  Park  or  in  the  Piedmont  county  fox-hunts. 

Kate  could  probably  shoot  fast  and  straight  and  nip  off 
a  rattlesnake's  head  before  he  could  throw  his  coil.  And 
doubtless  she  could  be  a  mighty  good  friend  to  a  fellow, 
without  thought  of  evil  or  fear  of  gossip.  She  was  no  doubt 
just  the  sort  of  pal  that  a  returning  soldier  needed  to  refresh 
his  heart  and  renew  his  belief  in  human  goodness  after  a  year 
of  foreign  war.  And  all  this  she  had  told  him  in  a  hand 
clasp  and  a  boyish  stare!  A  good  deal  can  be  conveyed  in 
those  cipher  codes. 

Bob  was  impatient  to  assure  himself  of  further  acquaint 
ance  with  these  simple  good  souls,  and  he  was  eager  to  put 
them  under  an  obligation.  He  said: 

"But  you  said  you  wanted  to  ask  a  favor  of  me." 

"Yes,"  said  Yarmy.  "I've  got  no  call  to  botha  yew  abaout 
it,  but  somehow  I  cottoned  to  you  from  the  start.  Down 
in  old  Houston  I  said  to  myself,  'There's  one  white  man 
withouten  even  a  flash  of  yalla.'  And  when  I  saw  you  here 
I  said:  'There's  my  big  white  hope.  The  good  Lawd  must 
'a'  sent  him,'  for  this  old  New  York  is  a  mighty  resky  town 
for  plain  Texans." 

"I'm  from  Virginia,"  said  Bob.  "And  my  father  often 
used  to  tell  me  of  the  Texas  Tigers.  He  fought  alongside  them 
in  one  or  two  engagements,  and  my  father  said  he  used  to 
feel  sorry  for  the  Yanks  when  the  Texans  went  at  'em." 

78 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

"  I  reckon  my  old  man  must  have  seen  your  old  man  there. 
I  was  brought  up  to  believe  that  Virginia  was  a  little  bit 
better  than  heaven." 

Bob  kindled  with  state  pride  at  this  gracious  tribute,  and 
he  repaid  the  compliment. 

"I  owe  Texas  a  big  debt  personally.  Talk  about  hos 
pitality!  Texas  put  our  Virginia  ideas  to  shame.  I  re 
member  a  dance  they  gave  at  Houston — a  street  dance,  the 
most  wonderful  thing  I  ever  heard  of.  Your  Texas  poet, 
Billie  Mayfield,  got  it  up.  Twelve  blocks  they  roped  off, 
with  a  band  on  every  block,  and  all  the  pretty  girls  in  Texas 
acting  as  hostesses.  I  danced  with  so  many  of  'em  that  I 
didn't  know  my  own  name,  to  say  nothing  of  anybody 
else's." 

And  now  Kate  found  courage  to  speak  up.  "I  reckon 
that's  why  Lieutenant  Taxta  doesn't  remember  dancing 
with  me." 

Joe  was  enraptured:  "Go  on!  Yew  didn't  dance  with 
Lieutenant  Taxta?" 

"Of  course  she  did,"  said  Bob,  and  made  a  handsome  lie 
of  it  while  he  was  at  it.  "I  didn't  feel  quite  sure  whether 
your  sister  wanted  you  to  know  that  she  was  there.  I  was 
hoping  to  get  rid  of  you  and  remind  her  of  it." 

If  Kate  saw  through  Bob's  ready  perjury,  she  was  too 
polite  or  too  timid  to  make  it  known.  As  for  Joe,  he  put  back 
his  head  and  roared  with  a  laughter  more  appropriate  to 
the  prairies  than  to  the  spacious  lobby  even  of  the  Com 
modore. 

"Yew  tew  are  suttainly  tew  cewt  faw  me." 

Bob  hastened  to  quench  his  ungainly  laughter  with  a 
quiet,  "But  the  favor  you  wanted  me  to  do  you?" 

Joe  sobered  at  once. 

"Oh  yes!  Well,  I'll  tell  you.  You  see,  brotha — pahdon 
me — lieutenant !  Whilst  I  was  doin'  my  time  overseas  there 
was  right  considerable  of  an  oil-strike  in  Texas.  It  came  in 
like  a  big  immense  gusher.  Texas  has  had  some  whoopin' 
oil  stampedes.  There  was  Beaumont  and  Sour  Lake,  and 
Humble,  and  some  over  in  Louisiana  and  Oklahomy.  But 
this  one  beats  'em  all,  they  say.  There's  been  right  smart 
about  it  in  the  papers.  Maybe  you've  run  across  some  of 
the  stories." 

79 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Yes,  I  did  read  something,"  Bob  mumbled,  his  heart 
threatening  to  knock  him  to  flinders.  He  waited  for  Joe 
to  go  on;  and  he  did. 

"Well,  Kate  came  up  Nawth  to  meet  me  when  my  ship 
got  in,  and  she  told  me  that  our  little  old  farm  is  right  in 
the  heart  of  the  excitement." 

"Isn't  that  wonderful!"  Bob  said.  "I  congratulate  you." 
And  he  shook  hands  ardently — with  Kate,  thrilling  again 
to  the  strange,  strong  honesty  of  her  grip. 

Joe  scowled.  "Well,  hit  would  be  wonderfuller  if  it  wasn't 
for  one  thing.  We're  just  about  broke.  The  trip  Nawth 
cost  a  heap,  and  Kate  had  to  wait  several  weeks  for  my  boat, 
and  I'm  still  waitin'  for  my  back  pay.  I  don't  want  to  lose 
the  chance  to  make  a  killin'.  After  a  year  of  the  waw,  I 
could  use  a  piece  of  money,  but  it  costs  money  to  get  a  rig 
and  bore  for  the  grease.  Of  course,  I  could  go  down  to  Wall 
Street,  or  to  some  of  these  curb  pirates,  and  get  some  cash, 
I  suppose.  But  from  all  I've  heard,  Wall  Street  is  a  place 
where  they  dehorn  us  Texas  cattle.  A  fellow  goes  in  a  long- 
horn  at  one  end  of  the  Street  and  comes  out  a  shorthorn 
at  the  other,  if  he  comes  out  alive  at  all.  And  it's  a  short 
street,  at  that. 

"So  I'm  kind  of  leary  about  where  to  turn.  I  don't  know 
hardly  anybody  up  in  this  man's  town.  Seein'  you,  I  thought 
maybe  you  could  give  me  some  advice  about  where  to  look 
for  a  little  capital." 

Bob  had  a  superstitious  feeling  that  Heaven  had  arranged 
this  meeting,  bringing  together  a  man  that  needed  a  little 
capital  and  a  man  that  needed  a  place  to  put  a  little  capital. 
He  stammered  almost  guiltily: 

"How — how  much  cap-capital  would  you  need,  do  you 
think?" 

"Well,  o*  co'se  that  all  depends.  I  could  get  a  hole  into 
the  ground  for  not  very  much,  but  if  I  had  a  little  mo'  I 
could  develop  the  prop'ty  so  as  to  make  a  big  killin'.  Kate 
tells  me  that  several  of  our  neighbors  who  was  so  po'  they 
couldn't  buy  grasshoppas  to  feed  field-mice  with  are  ridin' 
around  now  in  twin-sixes  and  talkin'  about  startin'  private 
banks.  The  mo'  we  had  to  start  out'  with  the  mo'  holes  we 
could  bo'  and  the  mo'  millions  we  could  make." 

Bob  was  almost  suffocated  with  the  glory  of  the  chance. 

80 


MONEY  COMES  IN 

He  heard  a  call  to  go  down  into  Texas  and  commence 
millionaire. 

He  grew  so  iridescent  that  even  the  insolent  April  took  on 
a  lovely  radiance.  He  could  realize  his  first  dream  and  mul 
tiply  his  ten  thousand  by  a  thousand  and  return  to  claim 
her.  She  would  probably  be  much  nicer  to  him  if  he  came 
to  her  as  a  magnate. 

And  in  the  meanwhile  he  could  be  providing  riches  for 
this  delightful  new  friend  of  his.  The  very  look  in  Kate's 
eyes  was  not  only  a  prayer,  but  an  obligation.  It  would  be 
a  blissful  duty  to  help  her  and  her  brother  to  a  splendor 
that  would  be  mighty  becoming  to  her. 

And  he  felt  that  Kate  at  least  would  not  treat  his  ambi 
tions  as  a  joke.  She  would  be  as  different  as  possible  from 
April.  April  would  make  a  fine  wife  for  the  plutocrat  Bob 
was  going  to  be.  But  in  the  meanwhile  Kate  would  be  an 
ideal  friend — a  kind  of  a  sort  of  a  sister,  something  Platonic 
— whatever  that  was. 

"I  think  I  can  find  you  the  money,"  said  Bob. 

"I  knew  it!"  said  Joe.   "Something  told  me." 

He  seized  Bob's  right  hand  in  a  burly  paw.  Bob  gave 
his  left  to  the  radiant  Kate.  He  apologized  rather  neatly: 

"Excuse  my  left.    It's  nearest  the  heart." 

Kate  smiled  sibyllically,  and  her  handclasp  grew  a  little 
stronger,  her  smile  dwelt  a  little  longer. 


Book   II 
MONEY    GOES    OUT 


CHAPTER  I 

WOMEN  long  ago  learned  to  accuse  their  men  of  many 
things  they  never  suspect  them  of.  The  reason  for 
this  is  still  mysterious  to  the  men,  but  doubtless  it  is  a  good 
one.  It  may  be  an  excellently  sensible  desire  to  keep  their 
men  from  even  the  appearance  of  evil,  lest  it  lead  to  the 
reality. 

Bob  Taxter  had  often  seen  how  quickly  April  could 
mobilize  her  accusations,  and  he  was  wholesomely  afraid  of 
her.  He  had  therefore  refused  to  join  Jimmy  Dryden  and 
his  bevy  of  girls  lest  April  should  come  along  and  accuse 
him  of  flirtation.  But  we  walk  forever  among  eggs,  and  in 
avoiding  one  we  are  always  crushing  another.  And  so  Bob, 
having  escaped  from  Jimmy  Dryden,  proceeded  to  walk 
into  Joe  Yarmy  and  the  pretty  Kate. 

April  was  punctual  at  the  Hotel  Commodore  and  saun 
tered  the  thronged  lobby,  hunting  for  Bob.  She  did  not 
find  him  in  the  little  coterie  of  girls  about  Jimmy  Dryden, 
and  so  was  denied  the  row  she  would  have  made.  But  she 
found  him  staring  into  the  eyes  of  Kate  Yarmy.  April  did 
not  realize  that  Joe  Yarmy  was  attached  to  the  group,  and 
Bob  seemed  to  have  forgotten  him. 

April  could  not  have  been  expected  to  assume  that  Bob 
was  not  looking  love  into  the  strange  woman's  eyes,  but 
was  boring  oil-wells  there  and  thinking  of  all  the  money 
he  should  make  for  April's  sweet  sake. 

The  primeval  woman  in  April  wanted  to  emit  shrieks  of  pre- 
glacial  rage  and  bash  in  the  head  of  her  rival  with  a  club.  The 
1919  woman  in  April  did  not  make  a  sound  or  a  move.  She 
stood  smiling  in  torture,  then  dropped  into  a  chair  and  waited. 

She  waited  a  long  while,  then  walked  slowly  past  Bob; 
but  he  did  not  even  look  at  her.  If  he  had  been  flirtatiously 
inclined,  his  roving  eyes  would  have  seen  the  pretty  ankles 
in  the  slim  puttees,  and  would  have  run  up  the  charmingly 

85 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

occupied  uniform  to  the  head  atop ;  he  would  then  have  recog 
nized  April,  have  risen  with  an  instant  inspiration,  told  a 
good  lie,  introduced  her  to  his  old  friends  the  Yarmys, 
bidden  them  good-by,  and  walked  off  with  April  in  peace. 

Instead,  he  attended  strictly  to  business,  and  his  virtue 
had  itself  for  its  only  reward.  April  strolled  on  past  in  a 
swirl  of  embarrassment,  chagrin,  and  wrath. 

She  sat  down  again  and  waited,  then  rose  and  walked 
toward  the  exit.  There  she  met  Walter  Reece,  who  saved 
her  self-respect  by  his  rapture  at  the  sight  of  her,  and  begged 
her  to  have  luncheon  with  him.  She  accepted  on  the  alle 
gation  that  the  "girl"  she  was  waiting  for  had  probably 
gone  to  the  wrong  hotel.  And  she  went  into  the  big  dining- 
room  with  Walter  Reece,  thanking  Heaven  that  she  was  not 
dependent  on  the  false  and  frivolous  Bob  Taxter  for  her  en 
tire  male  recognition. 

Young  women  who  go  about  in  breeches  and  indepen 
dence  nowadays  do  not  have  to  retire  to  helpless  solitude 
when  their  chosen  young  men  abandon  them.  They  do  now 
what  men  used  to  do — select  consolation  from  the  crowd 
they  circulate  in  with  freedom.  That  is  what  April  did. 

None  the  less,  she  was  preparing  to  make  Bob  sweat  for 
his  disloyalty. 

And  in  the  meanwhile  poor  Bob  was  in  a  fool's  paradise. 
He  was  idiotically  grateful  to  the  Yarmys  for  opening  the 
way  to  boundless  fortune,  and  to  Kate  Yarmy  for  promising 
to  line  the  path  with  grace.  Everything,  indeed,  seemed 
to  be  coming  Bob's  way. 

He  was  earnestly  unthinking  all  the  cruel  things  he  had 
said  of  his  great-uncle  Randolph  Chatterson  for  leaving  him 
the  ten  thousand  dollars  he  had  so  vigorously  cursed  before. 

Best  of  all,  the  money  had  come  to  his  worthy  self  by  an 
amazing  coincidence  at  the  very  moment  of  the  supreme 
golden  opportunity  for  making  a  huge  fortune  out  of  a  small 
capital.  He  had  in  his  pocket  several  thrilling  clippings 
from  that  very  morning's  paper.  One  advertisement  read: 

Mighty  Texas  gushers  roar.  Enormous  fortunes  made  by  many. 
Over  three  thousand  dollars  made  on  every  one  hundred  dollars  invested. 

Bob  had  figured  it  out  that  if  he  placed  his  ten  thousand 
dollars  here,  he  would  take  out  three  hundred  thousand. 

86 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

This  company  offered  its  stock  at  a  special  opening  price 
of  five  cents  a  share.  He  could  get  two  hundred  thousand 
shares  for  his  money.  That  had  a  nice,  wealthy  sound.  He 
could  hear  himself  saying,  careltssly:  "Oh  yes!  I  took  a 
little  flier  in  that  stock — only  a  couple  of  hundred  thousand 
shares,  as  I  remember." 

He  had  cut  out  another  advertisiment  with  the  glittering 
text: 

Fifty  new  millionaires!  The  great  oil-fields  of  Texas  have  already 
made  fifty  new  millionaires — and  no  one  knows  how  many  more  are 
in  the  making.  Twenty-five-hundred-barrel  well  near  us;  three- 
thousand-barrel  well  close  to  us;  five-thousand-  to  seven- thousand- 
barrel  gushers  crowd  around  us.  ...  Twenty-five  thousand  dollars  was 
recently  paid  for  a  lease  on  a  single  acre  near  us. 

Yet  another  advertisement  reproduced  in  facsimile  a 
check  for  ten  thousand  dollars  as  the  first  instalment  of  a 
total  of  thirty-five  thousand  dollars  from  a  two-thousand- 
dollar  investment.  Even  at  this  modest  rate,  Bob's  ten 
thousand  dollars  would  bring  him  in  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  thousand  dollars. 

The  figures  made  him  dizzy.  But  he  kept  telling  himself 
that  he  must  keep  his  head.  He  had  learned  this  in  his 
flying-machine  practice. 

Among  the  opportunities  in  the  morning  paper  was  a  note 
of  warning,  the  description  of  a  police  raid  on  an  oil-broker's 
office;  the  raiders  had  found  only  a  few  stamps  in  the  safe, 
and  the  concern  had  liabilities  of  two  million  dollars.  Hun 
dreds  of  hapless  investors  were  clamoring  for  news  of  their 
lost  savings.  The  dangers  were  as  abysmal  as  the  benefits 
were  cloud-scraping. 

Even  in  the  talk  with  Kate  Yarmy,  Bob's  mind  kept 
shuttling  from  "Easy  come,  easy  go!"  to  "Nothing  venture, 
nothing  gain!"  His  heart  was  throbbing  up  into  his  head. 
His  love  was  involved  in  his  finance. 

His  patriotism  was  stirred  as  well  as  his  mating-instinct. 
While  he  was  making  himself  a  vast  fortune,  he  could  be 
doing  a  noble  turn  for  Yarmy,  a  fellow-soldier,  a  humble  but 
worthy  private  who  had  appealed  to  him  as  to  a  Samaritan. 
To  be  a  Samaritan  at  a  profit  of  several  thousand  per  cent. 
7  87 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

was  charity  de  luxe.    The  most  attractive  thing  about  the 
Yarmy  opportunity  was  the  fact  that  it  was  cautious. 

The  investment  of  his  money  in  the  development  of  Joe 
Yarmy 's  little  farmstead  would  save  Bob  from  the  necessity 
of  running  the  gantlet  of  the  Wall  Street  footpads  and  the 
alternative  of  putting  his  money  into  the  hands  of  some  of 
the  advertising  stock-jobbers. 

Bob  was  no  blithering  fish  to  play  the  sucker  to  the  first 
shining  bait.  He  had  read  a  thing  or  two.  He  knew  that 
advertisers  often  exaggerate.  There  were  swindles  even  in 
the  oil  business.  He  would  be  nobody's  fool.  He  would  not 
intrust  his  money  to  anybody. 

He  would  go  to  Texas  and  bore  for  oil  himself.  He  would 
take  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  advice.  "Put  all  your  eggs  in 
one  basket — and  watch  the  basket."  He  did  not  know  that 
the  author  of  this  advice  had  gone  bankrupt  with  a  terrific 
crash  of  eggs  shortly  after. 

The  voyage  to  Texas  would  not  be  altogether  uninterest 
ing.  While  he  would  have  to  leave  April  in  New  York 
during  his  hunt  for  wealth,  he  would  not  be  entirely  deprived 
of  the  refining  and  congenial  influence  of  woman's  society. 
Joe  Yarmy's  sister — he  had  already  a  warm  spot  in  his 
heart  for  her.  There  was  no  nonsense  about  her.  She  was 
a  good  fellow.  They  would  be  pals.  He  would  make  her 
and  her  brother  rich,  and  win  himself  a  sister  thereby. 

April  would  like  Kate,  too.  He  must  arrange  to  have  the 
two  girls  meet  soon.  It  was  funny  how  different  the  two 
were  in  every  respect.  But  that  would  make  them  all  the 
better  friends.  It  was  funny,  too,  how  completely  fascinating 
two  absolutely  different  girls  could  be. 

This  many-voiced  fugue  of  rapture  was  running  all  its 
themes  at  once  through  Bob's  mind.  Yet  he  heard  himself 
saying  with  a  business-like  calm: 

"Supposing  I  could  find  the  money  for  you —  I  say, 
supposing — just  how  much  would  you  have  to  have?" 

Joe  laughed  with  an  amusing  parody  of  greed.  "Just  how 
much  you  got,  brotha?" 

Bob  laughed,  too.  Then  he  said  with  a  certain  magnifi 
cence — as  if  he  had  tons  of  money,  but  was  rather  stingy 
with  it: 

"Would  ten  thousand  dollars  get  us  anywhere?" 

88 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Joe  was  frank:  "Well,  hit  wouldn't  get  us  as  further  as  a 
million  would,  but  hit  would  get  us  ten  thousand  times 
furtherer  than  nothin'." 

Bob  persisted  seriously,   "But  would  it  get  a  well  down?" 

"Sure  it  would — two,  anyhow — maybe  more.  Some  of 
them  wells  only  goes  down  two  hundred  feet  or  so  and  strike 
oil-sands  raht  away." 

"Well,  I  could  raise  ten  thou.,  all  right,"  said  Bob. 

Joe  and  Kate  received  this  information  with  evident 
delight.  Joe  said,  earnestly: 

"That  would  save  us  our  little  farm.  And  once  we  bring 
in  a  well,  we  can  raise  all  the  extry  money  we  need — easy. 
But,  where's  all  this  money  at?  You  got  it  raht  handy?" 

"Well,  not  exactly,"  Bob  confessed.  "I  hope  to  have  it 
in  a  few  weeks.  You  can  wait,  can't  you?" 

Joe  pushed  his  hat  back  and  rubbed  his  head.  "Well,  I 
suppose  I  could,  if  it  wasn't  for  havin'  to  eat  once  in  a  while. 
O'  course,  ova  in  France,  I  used  to  go  for  fawty-eight  hours 
on  a  sanwidge;  but  Kate — I  hate  to  have  her  starvin'." 

Bob  did  not  like  that  prospect,  either.  He  said:  "Well,  I 
may  be  able  to  hurry  it  up.  You  see,  I've  got  to  see  the 
executor  of  the  will." 

Joe's  jaw  dropped.  "Oh,  this  is  comin*  to  you  in  a  will? 
Is  the  pawty  daid  yit?" 

"Oh  yes!  Poor  Uncle  Randolph  passed  away  while  I 
was  in  France.  He  left  some  friends  of  mine  over  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  They've  got  theirs  already,  so  I  reckon 
I'll  Jiave  no  trouble  collecting  my  share." 

Bob  was  in  a  rather  uncomfortable  position  of  humilia 
tion.  He  decided  to  shift  the  explanations  to  the  other  side. 
He  frowned  deeply  and  said: 

"Don't  take  offense  if  I  talk  frankly.  But — well,  you're 
a  perfect  stranger  to  me,  and — of  course  I'm  sure  we'll  become 
great  friends,  but — well,  so  many  wiser  people  than  I  am 
are  losing  so  much  money  on  fake  oil  properties —  You're 
not  getting  mad,  are  you?" 

"Go  raht  on,  brotha,"  Joe  said,  with  fine  sympathy. 
"Don't  you  take  me  on  trust,  or  nobody  else.  I  wouldn't 
do  it  myself.  I'm  likely  to  be  askin'  you  for  proof  that  you 
got  all  this  money  you  speak  of,  so  I  can't  fairly  object  to 
your  being  from  Missoura.  O'  course,  though,  I  can't  show 

89 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

you  any  samples  of  goods.  I  didn't  bring  Texas  up  here 
in  my  pocket.  I  can't  even  show  you  the  hole  in  the  ground. 
I  ain't  even  dug  ary  oil-well.  If  I  had  have,  I  wouldn't 
be  lookin'  for  money  up  here." 

Bob  grew  still  cannier.  "But  just  why  do  you  feel  so  sure 
there  is  oil  on  your  place?" 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you,"  said  Joe.  "There's  a  piece  of  land  on 
our  prop'ty  that's  kind  of  swampy-like,  puddles  and  cricks 
and  not  fit  for  raising  any  crops  of  nothin'.  Well,  you  see, 
caows  and  hosses  movin'  acrost  it  left  hoofprints  like.  Well, 
the  rain  used  to  stand  there — rain  stands  a  long  while  on  the 
old,  black,  waxy  soil  of  Texas  befo'  it  seeps  through. 

"Well,  I  used  to  notice  little  bubbles  comin'  up  on  those 
puddles — like  in  beer,  you  know;  and  now  and  again  I'd 
put  an  old  tin  tomatter-can  ova  a  puddle  and  wait  a  minute 
or  tew  and  then  set  a  match  tew  it,  and — zowy!  She'd 
explode  like  all-get-out.  The  old  can  would  go  sailin'  away 
in  the  air. 

"Well,  I  didn't  think  much  of  it  then,  but  I  realize  now 
that  hit  was  gas  risin'  from  oil  deposits  daown  below  that 
kind  of  'cumulated  there.  Other  folks'  findin'  so  many 
great  gushers  proves  it. 

"Man,  that  old  place  is  just  achin'  with  oil.  Why,  we  had 
a  neighba,  a  po'  old  widda  woman — Mrs.  Durrin,  her  name 
was;  and  Kate  was  tellin'  me —  Go  awn  and  tell  him,  Kate. 
She  knows  just  how  it  was." 

Kate  shook  her  pretty  head.  ' '  No  use ;  the  lieutenant  would 
only  think  I  was  lyin'." 

Bob  gazed  at  her  with  mingled  horror  and  adoration — a 
rather  complicated  gaze — which  implied,  "How  can  you 
be  so  wicked  as  to  think  I  am  so  insane  as  to  think  so  honest 
a  person  as  you  could  be  so  dishonest?"  His  eyes  said  all 
that  and  more.  His  lips  said: 

"Please!    I  beg  you!" 

"Well,"  Kate  began,  hesitantly,  "you  see,  on  the  next 
farm  to  ours  was  a  shabby  old  place  owned  by  this  Mrs. 
Durrin,  and  she  had  a  little  old  frame  shack  on  it.  Her  hus 
band  wasn't  much  account,  and  one  day  he  ups  and  dies 
and  leaves  her  with  nothin'  much  except  a  few  acres  and  a 
lot  of  children  and  some  caows. 

"She  used  to  milk  those  caows — sometimes  I've  seen  her 

90 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

milk  twelve  of  'em  in  the  mawnin'  befo'  breakfast.  I've  seen 
her  standin'  up  to  her  knees  in  mud,  workin'  raound  the 
place.  It  was  pitiful." 

How  sweet  upon  a  mouth  are  words  of  pity,  Bob  thought, 
especially  on  such  a  pretty  mouth  as  Kate's! 

"Well,  when  the  oil  craze  hit  our  part  of  the  country," 
Kate  went  on,  with  a  smile  replacing  her  sympathy,  "one 
of  Mrs.  Durrin's  grown-up  boys  who'd  been  a  rigger  for 
otha  wells  decided  to  sink  one  on  his  mother's  land.  She 
wouldn't  consent  for  the  lengest  tahm,  but  one  day  she  went 
away  to  visit  a  sick  sista  in  Houston  and  stayed  a  week; 
and  when  she  came  back  she  found  a  big  derrick  standing 
raht  where  she  used  to  hang  out  the  clothes.  Her  nice  clean 
yard  was  all  littered  up,  and  as  she  came  neara  she  saw 
that  all  her  white  chickens  and  nice,  neat  caows  were  dirty 
and  greasy.  She  was  simply  fu'ious.  She  came  up  close  and 
began  to  holla  at  her  son,  but  he  only  grinned  and  pointed 
to  a  stream  of  oil  as  big  as  a  stove-pipe  po'in'  out.  It  made 
a  regula  lake.  She  almost  fainted,  and  he  had  to  grab  her 
to  keep  her  from  fallin'  into  the  slush-pit.  Well,  that  well 
brought  in  only  twelve  hundred  barrels  a  day." 

"Only!"  Bob  gasped. 

Kate  nodded.  "The  first  one  was  the  smallest  one  of  the 
lot.  Her  boy  hired  help  and  ran  up  fo'  mo'  derricks,  and — 
well,  when  I  left  home,  Mrs.  Durrin  was  taking  in  ova  six 
thaousand  dolla's  a  month." 

"Good  Lord!"  Bob  groaned  in  awe.  But  this  was  not 
all.  Kate  went  on: 

"A  man  was  tellin'  me  that  the  widda  is  now  worth  abote 
seven  million  dolla's." 

Bob  almost  fainted.     Kate  continued: 

"She  still  lives  in  the  old  shack.  It's  home  to  her.  We 
Texans  love  our  homes,  I  tell  you !  She  has  an  automobile — 
a  big  twin-six;  and  she  has  diamonds,  too.  But  the  day  I 
left  she  waved  to  me  from  her  porch;  she  was  rockin'  her 
youngest  to  sleep  there." 

It  made  a  pretty  picture  of  Arcadian  simplicity  declining 
to  be  corrupted  by  vast  wealth;  but  Bob  wasted  no  thoughts 
on  this  phase.  He  was  thinking  of  himself  as  a  multimillion 
aire,  and  of  the  automobiles  and  diamonds  he  could  buy 
for  April. 


CHAPTER  H 

HPHE  thought  of  April  brought  back  to  Bob  the  memory 
I  of  his  engagement.  He  glanced  at  his  wrist-watch  and 
gasped:  "Holy  mackerel!  I  had  an  appointment  with — 
with  a  friend,  and  here  it  is  half  an  hour  late.  Will  you 
excuse  me?" 

He  could  not  find  April  anywhere  in  the  huge  lobby.  It 
never  occurred  to  him  to  look  in  the  dining-room,  where  he 
would  have  found  her  turning  Walter  Recce's  head.  When 
Bob  had  hunted  the  lobby  through  he  went  to  the  telephone- 
bureau  and  called  up  April's  number.  Mrs.  Summerlin 
answered  and  told  him  that  April  had  left  to  meet  him  nearly 
an  hour  before.  She  could  not  imagine  where  the  girl 
might  be. 

Bob  gritted  his  teeth  in  that  peculiar  nausea  one  feels 
who  has  muffed  an  engagement  and  cannot  find  the  other 
party  to  it.  He  went  the  grand  rounds  of  the  lobby  again 
with  a  hangdog  look,  uncertain  whether  April  had  forgotten 
or  had  come  and  gone  in  the  belief  that  he  had  forgotten. 
Worse  yet,  he  had  a  fear  that  she  might  have  caught  him 
gazing  on  Kate  Yarmy's  beauty  when  it  was  pink,  and  he 
writhed  to  think  how  he  must  have  looked  to  her. 

He  resolved  to  pursue  his  legacy  and  make  it  his  without 
delay.  He  put  in  a  long-distance  call  for  the  executor,  a 
Virginia  lawyer  with  an  office  in  Richmond.  Then  he  went 
into  the  men's  caf  6  and  ate  a  solitary  luncheon  in  surroundings 
safely  stag. 

A  page  called  him  from  his  coffee  to  the  telephone,  and  he 
had  a  pleasant  chat  with  the  executor,  who  rejoiced  in  the 
good  old  Virginia  name  of  Gooch  and  had  known  Bob  from 
boyhood.  Bob's  voice  was  identification  enough. 

Mr.  Gooch  was  a  rather  ponderous  and  circumlocutory 
talker  for  long-distance  prices,  and  he  felt  called  upon  to 
pay  a  tribute  to  Bob's  military  record  in  the  manner  of 

92 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

the  late  Mr.  Addison,  an  author  who  still  flourishes  in  the 
South. 

Mr.  Gooch  terrified  Bob  by  saying  that  his  money  ought 
to  be  withheld  for  a  year,  to  make  sure  that  no  debtors 
should  appear  with  claims  which  would  have  to  be  paid 
before  the  moneys  could  be  disbursed  to  the  legatees.  Bob 
saw  his  oil  hopes  going  glimmering.  Where  would  the 
Yarmys  be  a  year  hence?  They  could  hardly  wait  a  week. 
He  explained  to  Mr.  Gooch  that  he  had  a  splendid  oppor 
tunity  to  invest  the  money  cautiously,  and  after  much  ex 
pensive  conversation  persuaded  Mr.  G*och  to  mail  him  a 
check  in  full. 

Mr.  Gooch  was  really  eager  to  be  discharged  as  executor. 
He  had  probated  the  will,  and  he  was  satisfied  that  all  the 
debts  of  Uncle  Randolph  Chatterson  were  cleared.  He  had 
already  turned  over  to  April  and  her  mother  the  fortune  that 
they  had  not  yet  been  able  to  invest.  He  was  glad  to  do 
Bob  the  same  dubious  favor  and  end  his  own  responsibility. 

By  the  time  Bob  had  won  over  Mr.  Gooch  and  finished  his 
coffee  it  was  so  late  that  he  had  to  return  to  camp. 

The  evening  of  the  next  day  Bob  received  a  New  York 
draft  for  ten  thousand  dollars  from  Mr.  Gooch.  Attached 
was  a  receipt  to  be  acknowledged  before  a  notary.  He  went 
to  town  the  following  morning  and  entered  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Bank  to  open  an  account.  To  his  amazement  he  was  asked 
for  references.  This  dazed  him,  since  he  expected  to  be  re 
ceived  with  a  Southern  hospitality  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
he  came  to  deposit  a  fortune,  not  to  draw  one  out. 

He  was  shocked  and  puzzled.  He  could  think  of  no  one 
to  name  as  reference,  except  Mrs.  and  Miss  Summerlin, 
and  he  could  not  stoop  to  that.  But  the  cashier  ended  his 
embarrassment  by  a  deference  to  his  uniform  and  to  a  clip 
ping  Bob  fished  out  of  his  pocketbook  describing  his  cita 
tion  for  valor.  The  bank  accepted  his  account,  took  his 
signature,  and  gave  him  a  bank-book  and  a  sheaf  of  blank 
checks. 

When  Bob  stepped  out  into  the  air  he  paused  on  the  step, 
feeling  like  a  millionaire  with  a  private  mint  at  his  back.  He 
looked  up  and  down  Fifth  Avenue  with  a  condescending 
glance  and  swaggered  away.  He  went  into  Sherry's,  which 
was  soon  to  close  its  famous  doors  forever,  and  telephoned 

93 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

to  April.  He  found  her  out  again,  and  Pansy  told  him  that 
Miz  Summerlin  was  not  at  home,  neither. 

Now  Bob  felt  absolved  for  a  call  upon  the  Yarmys. '  He 
telephoned  to  the  number  Joe  had  given  him,  and  Kate's 
smooth  voice  answered.  She  promised  to  find  her  brother 
and  bring  him  along  to  the  luncheon  Bob  invited  them  to. 
Bob  wondered  if  it  wouldn't  be  right  pleasant  to  take  a 
little  spin  in  the  Park  first,  and  Kate  reckoned  it  would  be. 
She  agreed  to  be  waiting  for  Bob  on  the  steps  of  the  Savoy 
Hotel  in  half  an  hour. 

Bob  hunted  up  a  chauffeur  and  a  shiny  touring-car  and 
submitted  to  an  exorbitance  with  the  delight  of  a  newly 
landed  sailor  glad  to  be  bilked.  He  found  Kate  and  Joe 
at  the  appointed  place  and  supported  Kate's  elbow  in.  He 
told  the  driver,  "  Round  the  Park  and  up  the  Drive  and  then 
to  Delmonico's." 

He  sat  back  like  an  owner  and  looked  over  Central  Park 
as  if  he  might  buy  it.  He  was  saved  from  this  extravagance 
by  the  aspect  of  Riverside  Drive.  Perhaps  that  would  be 
a  still  better  place  to  pitch  his  tent;  the  Hudson  River  would 
be  rather  amusing  in  his  front  yard. 

Kate  and  Joe  could  not  help  noticing  that  the  car  carried 
Cassar.  They  smiled  amiably  at  the  amiable  graciousness 
of  their  host,  trying  his  mightiest  to  be  simple  in  spite  of 
his  manifest  opulence.  Finally  Joe  said: 

"Looks  like  to  me  you  must  have  met  up  with  that  old 
executioner  and  took  a  heap  of  money  offen  him." 

Bob  laughed  with  comfortable  confusion  and  nodded, 
saying: 

"I  didn't  want  to  get  down  to  business  till  we'd  had  a 
breath  of  fresh  air." 

''Fresh  air  is  mahty  nice,"  Joe  conceded,  "but  they's  a 
heap  of  it  in  Texas,  and  I'm  kind  of  homesick  for  it.  I 
don't  like  to  crowd  you  any,  brotha,  but — well,  it's  only  fair 
to  say  that  sence  I  saw  you  last  I  ran  into  a  certain  pawty 
from  my  own  home  taown  who  is  mahty  anxious  to  nick 
in  on  this  little  proposition." 

This  startled  Bob  from  his  lordly  complacence.  "I  hope 
you  told  him  that  I  had  an  option." 

Joe  grinned  in  perplexity.  "Well,  I  did  allow  that  you  had 
spoken  of  it,  but  he  says  to  me:  'Where's  his  cash  at?  Has 

94 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

he  paid  you  anything  daown?'  he  says;  and  I  had  to  say: 
'  Well,  no,  I  haven't  seen  the  color  of  any  money,  but  he  has 
a  sort  of  a  kind  of  a  moral  option,'  I  says.  And  he  says, 
'Joe,  you  must  have  been  gassed  considerable  over  there 
in  that  old  France,'  he  says.  'How  do  you  know,'  says  he, 
'that  this  fella  'ain't  changed  his  mind  and  bought  in  on 
some  other  property?  The  newspapers,'  he  says,  'are  simply 
bustin'  with  advertisements,  and  he  may  have  lost  out 
a'ready  to  some  tin-horn  gambla.'  Of  co'se,  I  said  I  knew 
Lieutenant  Taxta  was  a  man  of  his  word,  but — well,  I'll 
say  you  had  me  worried." 

Bob  laughed  in  acute  distress.  He  was  placed  in  a  corner 
now,  for  sure.  He  must  either  accept  the  ugly  name  of 
"welsher"  or  the  fool's  cap  of  "plunger."  He  did  not  want 
to  draw  out  at  once  the  money  he  had  just  deposited.  He 
liked  to  toy  with  the  luxurious  feeling  of  ten  thousand 
dollars  in  the  bank.  It  was  a  new  thrill  to  him,  and  he 
realized  that  the  miser  knows  a  specific  voluptuousness 
denied  to  other  mortals. 

The  car  rounded  the  cylindrical  mausoleum  of  General 
Grant  and  slipped  back  down  Riverside  Drive,  and  Bob 
liked  the  scene  so  well  that  he  felt  reluctant  to  leave  velvety 
New  York  for  the  slimy  oil-wells  of  Texas.  He  fenced  with 
questions  designed  to  clear  up  obscurities,  but  really  meant 
to  obscure  his  own  hesitation. 

The  car  crossed  Seventy-second  Street,  dived  into  Central 
Park,  and  passed  the  bulky  effigy  of  Daniel  Webster,  and 
still  he  had  not  given  Joe  a  definite  answer.  He  felt  that 
Joe  was  growing  a  trifle  peevish,  but  he  could  not  bring  him 
self  to  say  the  definite  yes  or  no. 

Worse  yet,  he  felt  a  certain  chill  in  the  manner  of  Kate, 
who  sat  next  to  him.  At  first  she  had  nestled  very  cozily 
alongside.  The  swerves  of  the  car  had  flung  her  now  and 
then  against  him  with  a  soft  clash  of  members  that  was  more 
agreeable  than  he  dared  confess  even  to  himself.  But  now 
she  held  aloof  a  little;  she  grew  rigid  and  with  her  elbow 
avoided  the  contact.  He  realized  that  she  was  subtly  dis 
pleased  with  him,  and  he  was  mighty  sorry ;  but  ten  thousand 
dollars  was  a  high  stake  to  play  just  because  a  very  nice 
girl  was  getting  huffy  about  his  deliberation,  especially  as — 

He  turned  suddenly  with  a  violent  twist  and  a  backward 

95 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

gaze.  Wasn't  that  April  Summerlin  who  just  shot  by? 
All  he  could  see  now  was  a  very  trim  pair  of  shoulders  and 
a  jaunty  overseas  cap  on  a  pretty  head  in  a  dwindling  car 
of  military  gray. 

He  apologized  for  his  abrupt  action:  "I'm  sorry,  but 
— that  looked  a  little  like  Miss  Summerlin  who  just  went  by." 

Joe's  voice  softened.  "That's  the  lady  you  said  had  come 
into  a  lot  of  money,  ain't  it?" 

"Yes,"  said  Bob. 

"You  allowed  she  might  be  interested  in  this  little 
proposition." 

"Well,  yes — she  might,  but — " 

Bob  was  in  a  quandary  indeed.  If  April  had  seen  him 
motoring  with  Kate,  what  wouldn't  she  say  to  him?  How 
could  he  justify  his  escapade  except  as  a  business  conference? 
She  would  be  skeptical;  he  would  have  to  tell  her  the  truth, 
or  she  would  never  speak  to  him  again. 

He  was  afraid  of  few  things  in  the  world,  but  April's  sus 
picion  was  one  of  them.  He  had  faced  five  Boche  air-hyenas 
with  laughter,  but  he  grew  craven  at  the  thought  of  a  duel 
with  April's  temper. 


CHAPTER  III 

S  Bob  fretted,  he  heard  Joe  saying: 

"  Looks  like  to  me  it's  up  to  you,  brotha,  to  come  across 
with  the  goods.  I  don't  want  to  push  you,  but  I  don't  like 
to  have  anybody  yessing  me  just  for  a  stall.  This  man 
from  my  home  taown  means  business.  I  got  to  take  him  or 
leave  him,  he  says,  because  he's  got  other  lines  out.  He's 
got  no  end  of  money,  tew." 

"I  see,"  Bob  mumbled  in  a  tangle  of  ideas. 

Joe  went  on:  " But  I'll  do  this  much:  you  put  me  in  touch 
with  those  pawties  you  speak  of,  and  if  we  get  them  interested 
I'll  give  you  mo'  tahm,  and  I'll  tell  this  friend  to  be  on  his 
way." 

Bob's  heart  froze  at  the  keen  definition  of  this  proposal. 
He  dreaded  to  submit  April  and  her  mother  to  the  entice 
ments  of  the  oil  siren.  It  was  one  thing  for  him  to  gamble; 
it  was  another  for  them  to.  The  Yarmy  plan  looked  safe 
and  conservative  as  an  investment  for  his  own  money  and 
labor;  but  as  an  investment  for  April's  wealth — 

Still,  he  had  to  justify  himself  to  April  for  his  appearance 
with  Kate.  He  heard  Joe  saying: 

"Of  co'se,  yo'  friends  will  have  every  oppo'tunity  to  look 
into  it  thoroughly.  Fullest  investigation  invited,  as  the  fella 
said,  is  my  motto.  If  they  don't  like  the  looks  of  it,  no 
harm  is  done.  Otherwise,  seems  like  to  me  I'd  have  to  link 
up  with  the  otha  fella.  Haow  about  it,  brotha?" 

"All  right,"  Bob  sighed.  "I'll  see  if  I  can  arrange  a  meet 
ing.  Miss  Summerlin  was  out  when  I  telephoned,  but  as 
soon  as  I  can  get  her  on  the  wire  I'll  let  you  know,  and — 
well — I'll  let  you  know." 

"I  can't  ask  no  fairer  than  that,  can  I,  Kate?"  said  Joe. 

And  Kate  said,  "No."  Her  arms  came  out  of  fold;  her 
elbows  no  longer  fended  Bob  off,  and  as  the  car  rounded  the 
next  curve  she  rippled  against  him  with  a  disconcerting 
mellowness. 

97 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Bob  lunched  the  Yarmys  royally  at  Delmonico's,  and  Joe 
asked  many  questions  about  the  Summerlins,  which  Bob 
answered  in  a  troubled  wonderment  whether  he  were  be 
traying  or  befriending  them. 

He  was  as  honest  and  chivalrous  a  youth  as  could  be  found 
in  a  day's  flight,  and  he  seesawed  between  a  gallant  desire 
to  be  knightly  in  his  love  and  a  highly  laudable  desire  to  get 
rich  honorably  by  taking  advantage  of  nature's  wealth  and 
enhancing  the  future  of  his  sweetheart  and  himself.  He 
grew  dizzy  with  his  perplexity,  and  finally  his  various  selves 
agreed  to  sleep  on  it.  People  have  a  way  of  tucking  other 
things  than  bits  of  wedding-cake  under  their  pillows  to 
dream  over. 

Joe  Yarmy  graciously  extended  Bob's  option  a  little 
longer,  and  Kate  won  him  immeasurably  by  her  candid 
eagerness  to  meet  Miss  Summerlin  and  help  her  to  get  rich 
quick. 

Bob  went  back  to  camp  and  found  there  his  anxiously 
awaited  release  from  military  servitude.  A  large  sheet  of 
paper  testified  that  he  had  been  granted  an  honorable  dis 
charge,  and  another  informed  him  that  he  was  commis 
sioned  a  captain  in  the  Officers'  Reserve  Corps. 

He  suddenly  realized  the  glorious  privilege  of  equality 
belonging  to  the  citizens  of  the  United  States.  He  who 
had  been  merely  a  liveried  servant  to  many  officers  of  su 
perior  insignia  was  now  "an  American,  by  God!"  and  he 
could  snap  his  fingers  under  the  nose  of  a  major-general  and 
tell  him  where  he  got  off. 

When  Bob  had  first  put  his  uniform  on  he  had  sent  his 
despised  civilian  togs  to  his  mother's  home  for  storage. 

On  his  return  from  the  wars  he  had  written  his  mother  a 
long  love-letter  and  asked  her  to  forward  his  mufti  against 
the  glorious  hour  of  his  return  to  civilians.  He  had  also 
promised  to  visit  her  the  moment  he  was  free  of  the  army. 
His  faithful  mother  sent  on  his  trunks,  but  the  unfaithful 
son  had  already  postponed  his  journey  home  and  was  now 
wondering  whether  he  had  better  not  defer  it  till  after  his 
Texas  venture.  Business  is  always  a  good  excuse  for  putting 
off  visits  home.  He  wrote  his  mother  that  the  date  of  his 
arrival  was  uncertain.  He  tried  to  be  very  sad  about  it, 
but  the  important  fact  to  her  was  that  he  would  not  come. 

98 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Bob  took  his  old  clothes  out  of  the  trunks  and  rejoiced 
in  their  colors.  But  to  his  horror  they  proved  ludicrously 
small  and  threatened  to  split  at  many  points  of  tension. 
As  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  other  lazy  American 
youth,  the  plain  food  and  complex  activity  of  life  in  the  ser 
vice  of  Uncle  Sam  had  enlarged  him  mightily  in  body  and 
soul.  As  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  other  American 
youth,  his  old-fashioned  mental  and  physical  clothes  would 
no  longer  contain  him,  either.  This  meant  a  vast  amount 
of  scurry  for  the  political  and  sartorial  tailors  of  the  day. 

Bob  had  learned  from  other  officers  of  earlier  escape  that 
the  price  of  clothes  had  doubled  or  trebled  since  the  war, 
and  that  it  took  six  weeks  or  more  to  get  a  new  suit  made, 
if,  indeed,  the  overworked  tailor  would  stoop  to  take  his 
measure  at  all.  Millions  of  men  were  clamoring  for  long 
trousers  and  waistcoats  and  coats  of  rolling  lapel.  Bob  shud 
dered  to  think  that  for  a  month  or  more  he  would  have  to 
stick  to  the  uniform  or  clothe  himself  in  hand-me-downs. 
Anything  was  better  than  lingering  in  olive  drab,  and  he 
studied  with  feverish  interest  the  advertising  pages  of  the 
magazines  and  newspapers  in  which  demigods  of  male  beauty 
were  clothed  in  ready-to-wear  clothes,  painted  by  artists  of 
renown. 

That  evening  Bob  went  about  the  camp  ridiculing  such 
of  his  brother  officers  as  still  awaited  their  reprieves.  He 
spoke  to  his  once  superiors  with  a  smiling  reminder  that  they 
were  now  his  inferiors.  He  reveled  in  the  ecstasies  of  a 
convict  who  had  served  his  time  and  become  the  master  of 
his  own  hours. 

He  absented  himself  from  retreat,  and  the  next  morning 
mocked  the  bugler  who  sounded  reveille,  turned  his  blank 
eted  back  on  the  subsequent  racket,  and  dozed  in  fields  of 
asphodel  till  he  was  fed  up  on  sleep. 

He  dressed  with  a  leisure  unknown  for  nearly  two  years, 
packed  his  duds,  and  struck  out  for  New  York,  a  free  man. 
When  he  began  to  price  the  things;  he  had  to  buy  his  gaiety 
expired.  He  realized  that  he  was  by  no  means  a  free  man, 
but  a  slave  to  conventions.  Ready-made  suits  cost  more 
than  tailor-made  before  the  war. 

The  dealers  who  had  advertised,  "  Come  up-stairs  and  save 
$10,  get  a  $30  suit  for  $20,"  now  blazoned  forth  the  promise 

99 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

of  suits  at  the  up-stairs  bottom-rock  price  of  forty-five 
dollars. 

Silk  shirts  were  eight  or  ten  dollars  apiece;  silk  pajamas 
were  twenty-four  dollars  a  suit;  neckties  of  sufficient  gor- 
geousness  ran  from  three  to  five  dollars;  colored  silk  socks 
were  of  equal  cost,  and  the  range  of  choice  was  small.  Shoes 
were  twelve  dollars.  A  standard  straw  hat  was  eight  dol 
lars,  a  felt  hat  fifteen.  Underclothes  cost  enough  to  be 
worn  outside.  And  there  was  a  so-called  "luxury  tax"  on 
many  items.  But  he  had  to  buy  something;  so  he  paid  like 
a  doleful  bride  spending  her  dowry  on  her  trousseau. 

Bob  went  to  a  tailor  to  order  himself  a  few  garments  to 
his  own  measure.  Before  the  war  the  next-to-the-best 
tailors  charged  fifty-six  dollars  for  a  fine  sack  suit.  Now  the 
tailor  offered  Bob  a  great  bargain  at  one  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  if  he  would  order  at  once  before  the  next  lift  of  price 
and  the  recurrence  of  the  intermittent  strike  fever.  Fur 
thermore,  if  Bob  ordered  at  once,  he  could  get  his  suit  in  a 
hurry — only  five  weeks  or  so. 

Bob  commanded  two  suits — one  for  day  and  one  for  night 
— hoping  to  have  enough  left  of  his  ten  thousand  to  pay  for 
them  when  they  were  ready.  Then  he  went  and  bought  him 
self  a  ready-to-wear  business  suit  and  a  dinner-jacket  and 
trousers  and  waistcoat  for  immediate  evenings. 


CHAPTER  IV 

IT  was  indeed  April  whom  Bob  had  seen  scudding  past 
his  car  in  Central  Park!  She  had  been  delivering  a  trio 
of  soldiers  with  variegated  disablements  to  an  up-town  train 
ing-school.  Returning  for  more,  she  saw  Bob  first,  and  her 
car  swayed  as  she  gripped  the  wheel  in  horror  at  the  sight 
of  him  staring  once  more  into  the  eyes  of  that  creature  she 
had  seen  him  staring  at  in  the  hotel. 

Her  indignant  foot  had  stepped  hard  on  the  gas,  and  she 
had  shot  by  him  as  if  she  were  the  fugitive  from  justice  and 
not  he.  Her  heart  sickened  in  her  breast  at  the  thought  of 
Bob's  disloyalty,  and  it  took  all  her  courage  to  keep  her  from 
swooning  like  a  disprized  heroine  of  Victorian  fiction.  She 
reminded  herself  that  she  was  a  sergeant  in  the  military,  and 
drove  manfully  to  her  destination. 

Still,  for  all  her  uniform,  she  was  a  lovelorn  martyr  to  the 
penitential  fires  of  jealousy,  and  she  could  not  even  decide 
whether  she  ought  to  discard  Bob  as  a  worthless  traitor  or 
fight  for  him  as  a  prize  too  precious  to  be  left  to  any  other 
woman. 

She  kept  at  her  tasks  and  finished  the  day  and  her  own 
resources  of  courage  together.  Before  she  went  home  she 
put  in  a  request  for  her  discharge  from  the  Motor  Corps. 
She  could  not  fight  for  Bob  or  against  him  with  the  handicap 
of  one  uniform  and  a  schedule  of  hours  arranged  by  her 
superiors.  Her  she-captain  informed  her  that  there  was  a 
great  parade  on  the  second  day,  and  that  she  must  make  it. 

She  reached  home  in  a  state  of  mental,  physical,  and 
spiritual  collapse.  She  found  her  mother,  as  usual,  reading 
the  circulars  of  advertisement  solicitors.  Mrs.  Summerlin 
glanced  over  her  spectacles  to  ask: 

"Have  a  hard  day,  honey?" 

"Ghastly!  I  saw  Bob  in  the  Park — in  a  motor  with  a 
creature — " 

101 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"In  a  meature  with  a  crotor!    Did  you  speak  to  him?" 
"Speak  to  him!    Humph!    He  was  too  busy  even  to  see 
me!    He  was  simply  plastered  to  the  eyes  of  that  woman." 
"A  woman!    You  don't  think  he's  lost  his  head?" 
"He  never  had  a  head,  but  his  heart's  gone,  I  reckon." 
"Now,  April,  don't  go  jumping  at  conclusions." 
"She  was  a  right  pretty  girl,  too.     Men  would  call  her 
pretty.      I   shouldn't,   though.     She  looked   rather — well, 
hardly  what  I'd  call — nice." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  struggled  to  her  feet  only  to  sit  down 
again. 

"April!  Where  do  you  get  such  ideas?  Don't  speak  of 
such  things!" 

"You're  right.     I  won't." 

"No,  I  don't  mean  that.    Tell  me  more  about  it." 
"I'd  rather  not.     I'll  wait  till  Bob  comes  round  with  an 
explanation — if  he  can  make  one  up." 

And  then  she  climbed  the  stairs  to  dress  for  dinner,  for 
the  Motor  Corps  women  were  permitted  to  resume  their 
swan's-downs  after  sunset. 

Walter  Reece  telephoned  to  ask  April  to  go  to  the  theater 
or  the  movies  or  a  dance  with  him,  but  she  pleaded  another 
engagement.  She  wanted  to  stay  at  home  and  make  the 
most  of  her  misery.  She  dawdled  about  her  statuary  and 
mused  upon  the  figure  of  Bob  that  she  had  begun.  She 
mocked  the  impulse  that  had  led  her  to  idealize  him — almost 
to  idolize  him — as  a  winged  angel  in  aviator's  togs.  For  a 
while  she  stood  with  a  lump  of  clay  in  her  palm,  and,  snatch 
ing  off  little  tufts  of  it,  threw  them  at  the  statue  to  light 
where  they  would.  She  felt  an  impulse  to  indulge  in  the 
ancient  practices  of  witchcraft  and  stick  pins  into  the  image 
so  that  Bob  might  writhe  with  unexplained  pangs.  Maeter 
linck  was  reviving  the  belief  in  such  things,  and  explaining 
them  simply  and  plausibly  as  the  result  of  "odic  effluvia." 
Anything  can  be  explained  if  you  only  get  a  new  phrase 
for  it. 

At  last,  with  a  groan  of  rage,  more  at  herself  for  loving 
him  than  at  Bob  for  being  worthless  of  her  love,  April  seized 
the  clay  wings  and  broke  them  from  his  shoulder-blades  and 
flung  them  down. 

102 


CHAPTER  V 

next  morning  April  thrust  her  weary  arms  and  legs 
into  her  uniform  and  fastened  on  her  puttees  like  one 
of  the  Roman  sportswomen  that  Juvenal  derided  for  wearing 
greaves.  Her  overseas  cap  weighed  her  down  like  a  helmet. 
She  wanted  to  be  a  woman  again  and  have  the  privilege  of 
hysterics. 

Along  about  lunch-time  she  was  called  to  the  headquarters 
telephone.  She  was  so  amazed  to  hear  Bob's  voice  fuming 
from  the  rubber  chalice  that,  before  she  could  remember 
her  grudges,  she  had  greeted  him  with  a  cry  of  welcome. 

"I  got  your  number  from  your  mother,"  Bob  said,  in  a 
tone  of  sunlit  honey.  "I  want  you  to  see  me  in  civilian's 
clothes.  I've  just  been  ready-mading  myself  to  death,  and 
you'd  never  know  me." 

April's  curiosity  overpowered  her.  "Come  round  here  at 
once,"  she  said,  "and  give  the  Motor  Corps  a  good  laugh." 

"No,  you're  coming  to  lunch  with  me." 

"The  next  time  I  accept  an  invitation  from  you,  young 
man,  I'll  bring  some  sandwiches.  You  never  keep  your 
dates." 

" Don't  I,  though?  I  was  half  an  hour  ahead  of  time  yes 
terday,  and  hunted  all  over  the  hotel  for  you." 

"Did  you  expect  to  find  me  inside  the  eyes  of  that  flapper 
you  were  ogling?" 

"What's  that?" 

"Oh,  you  heard  me!  And  I  saw  you!  I  passed  right  by 
you,  but  you  were  sunk — completely  sunk  " 

"Now,  April!    We  were  talking  about  you  all  the  time." 

April's  mocking  laughter  hurt  his  ears  and  her  heart. 
But  she  consented  to  take  lunch  with  him  provided  he  called 
for  her  at  the  headquarters.  She  was  on  the  steps  and 
watched  him  swinging  along  in  clothes  that  were  eclectic  of 
design. 
8  103 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

He  was  an  entirely  different  Bob  from  the  one  she  had 
seen  in  uniform.  She  suffered  a  shock  of  disillusion,  as  mill 
ions  of  other  women  did.  There  were  broken  engagements 
by  the  hundred,  and  many  a  war-marriage  ended  in  divorce 
when  the  habiliments  of  valor  came  off  and  the  prosaic 
garments  of  citizenship  went  on. 

They  went  to  the  Biltmore,  and  Bob  lost  further  luster 
in  the  mob  of  uniforms.  The  whole  world  was  uncomfort 
able  in  its  transition  phase  between  war  and  peace.  Nothing 
was  adjusted  yet. 

The  aftermath  of  glory  and  the  foremath  of  peace  would 
not  blend.  President  Wilson  was  in  France.  The  nation 
had  been  wallowing  along  in  the  trough  of  a  sea  of  politics 
without  a  pilot.  The  country  had  forgotten  that  it  had  a 
President  for  any  other  purpose  than  discussion.  The 
Senators  and  Congressmen  at  home  were  furious  because  the 
treaty  in  which  they  were  partners  was  being  drawn  up  over 
seas  without  consulting  them  or  inviting  their  advice.  Re 
turning  soldiers  brought  back  disheartening  prejudices 
against  the  Allies  and  against  their  own  officers.  The  League 
of  Nations  was  a  topic  of  eternal  war.  The  believers  of  it 
upheld  it  as  a  guaranty  of  perpetual  peace,  and  at  the  same 
time  disturbed  the  peace  by  bearing  false  witness  against 
the  unconverted.  They  called  the  disbelievers  fiends  and 
Judases  and  lovers  of  blood;  the  disbelievers  called  the  be 
lievers  traitors  to  Washington  and  Monroe,  guarantors  of 
warfare  and  fanatics  of  internationalism. 

Silly  dreamers,  forever  looking  forward  into  visions  in 
stead  of  backward  into  experience,  were  waking  with  a 
morning-after  taste  in  their  mouths.  They  had  proclaimed 
that  the  world  would  be  purged  of  its  dross  by  its  passage 
through  the  fire,  that  the  majestic  self-forgetfulness  dis 
played  in  war  would  remain  as  a  habit  of  mind  when  peace 
was  established.  And  now  the  only  result  of  the  war  seemed 
to  be  ruins,  graves,  wounds,  high  prices,  and  low  ideals. 
Everybody  saw  everybody  else  snatching  selfishly  at  the  same 
old  prizes;  life  was  once  more  a  grab-bag  of  opportunities. 

April  felt  a  suspicion  of  change  in  Bob.  He  who  had 
waited  months  for  a  chance  at  battle  grew  furious  at  having 
to  wait  a  few  minutes  for  a  table.  He  who  had  lived  on  filthy 
grub,  and  little  of  it,  with  relish  found  nothing  fit  to  eat  on 

104 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

a  Biltmore  bill  of  fare.  He  wanted  to  wring  the  neck  of  a 
waiter,  who  had  also  been  a  soldier,  for  not  striking  the  speed 
of  a  quick-lunch  room. 

April  noted  that  Bob  seemed  to  defer  the  subject  of  the 
woman  he  was  with.  She  broached  the  matter  herself  at 
last.  "You  were  going  to  tell  me  about  that  girl,  Bob." 

He  said,  "Oh  yes!"  with  what  she  assumed  to  be  a  guilty 
start. 

He  had  been  trying  for  some  time  to  arrange  a  good 
beginning  for  his  story,  and  April  caught  him  unready.  He 
bolted  into  the  midst  of  things. 

'Well,  you  see,  this  Joe  Yarmy — " 

'Oh!  you  call  her  Joe  already?" 

'Call  who  Joe?" 

'This  girl." 

'I  was  speaking  of  her  brother!" 

'Oh!  she  has  a  brother!" 

'Of  course  she  has." 

'I'm  supposed  to  know  that,  then." 

'You're  supposed  to  let  me  tell  this  my  own  way." 

'Oh!  It's  as  complicated  as  all  that,  is  it?  Well,  go  on 
and  tell  it  your  own  way." 

'It's  not  complicated  at  all." 

'Then  why  are  you  so  touchy  about  it?" 

'It's  not  me  that's  touchy;  it's  you." 

'Oh!  now  I'm  to  blame — as  usual!" 

'My  God!  April,  will  you  never  grow  up?  You're  as 
impossible  as  you  were  when  you  were  five  years  old." 

"Oh,  forgive  me,  Mr.  Possible!  If  I'm  so  impossi 
ble,  and  have  always  been,  why  do  you  bother  with  me 
at  all?" 

"I  don't  know,  unless  it's  because  I've  been  cursed  from 
my  cradle  with  loving  you." 

This  melted  her  a  little.  She  laughed  and  said:  "Well, 
go  on.  Her  brother  Joe — " 

The  waiter  interpolated  a  few  dishes  and  took  away  a 
few  while  Bob  gnashed  his  teeth.  When  this  third  person 
moved  off  Bob  began  anew: 

"The  other  day  a  soldier  named  Joe  Yarmy  came  up  to 
me  and  asked  my  advice." 

"Why  did  he  pick  on  you?" 

105 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Because  he  had  met  me  in  Texas  when  I  was  learning  to 
fly  there." 

"And  had  you  met  his  sister  there,  too?" 

"No.  Well,  yes — at  least,  she  said  I  had  danced  with  her 
at  the  big  street-dance  in  Houston." 

"Oh!  you  were  dancing  in  Texas,  were  you?  I  don't  re 
member  you  writing  me  about  any  dancing." 

"It  was  probably  during  one  of  the  times  when  we  were 
not  writing,"  Bob  groaned;  then  he  struck  out  viciously. 
"It  was  just  about  the  time,  I  reckon,  when  you  were  going 
to  marry  that  Major  What's-his-name." 

In  fighting  with  a  woman  a  man  should  never  hit  her. 
His  whole  duty  is  to  run  away  and  dodge  until  she  is  tired 
out;  then,  if  she  loves  him,  she  will  surrender  to  him  and 
accept  his  apologies  for  her  bad  temper.  April's  entirely 
unfair  answer  to  Bob's  very  palpable  hit  was  to  say  with 
demoniac  cleverness: 

"Oh,  you  were  revenging  yourself  on  me  by  flirting 
with  another  girl?  I  see!  Quite  proper!  Go  on." 

Bob  simply  would  not  have  this.  He  pushed  away  with 
disgust  an  exceedingly  toothsome  brochette  of  chicken 
livers,  and  shook  his  head  in  despair.  His  temper  told  him 
to  hurl  the  table  over  and  run  amuck  through  the  restaurant, 
screaming  curses.  But  his  breeding  told  him  that  this 
luxury  was  denied  him.  He  said,  very  quietly: 

"Since  you  know  the  whole  story,  write  it  yourself.  You'll 
get  no  more  out  of  me." 

Then  he  dragged  the  chicken  livers  back  and  devoured 
them  with  a  ferocity  that  could  have  chewed  up  the  steel 
skewer  and  never  noticed  it. 

April  pecked  daintily  with  her  fork  at  an  omelette  aux  fines 
herbes  and  laughed  the  while  a  low  mocking  gurgle  that 
threatened  Bob's  sanity.  For  the  waiter's  sake  they  finished 
the  meal  with  decorum.  Bob  called  for  the  check,  tried  not 
to  look  the  astonishment  he  felt  at  the  munificence  of  the 
price  for  the  modest  repast,  and  paid  it  with  liberal  usury 
for  the  waiter,  and  they  strolled  out  of  the  room,  trying  to 
act  as  if  their  hearts  were  not  debating  between  murder  and 
suicide. 

Bob  called  up  a  taxi.    April  said: 

"I'd  prefer  to  walk,  if  you  don't  mind." 

1 06 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Bob  countermanded  the  taxi  and  walked.  When  they 
reached  April's  headquarters  she  said: 

"Good-by." 

He  groaned.   "Shall  I  see  you  again?" 

She  laughed.    "You  know  the  address!"  and  left  him. 

He  saluted  before  he  realized  that  he  no  longer  wore  an 
overseas  cap;  then  he  lifted  his  hat  and  walked  away  in  a 
wrath  all  the  blacker  because  the  whole  quarrel  was  so  in 
famously  silly.  He  had  forgotten  to  arrange  the  meeting 
with  Kate,  and  he  was  glad  of  it. 

He  did  not  know  that  April  was  peering  out  of  the  window 
at  him  through  a  rain  of  tears  as  she  wondered  why  she 
loved  him  so  and  was  so  mean  to  him. 

Bob  went  to  his  rooms,  for  he  had  taken  rooms — not  a 
room,  but  rooms.  None  of  the  big  hotels  could  give  him  any 
space  at  all,  but  a  fellow-officer  just  quitting  New  York  had 
referred  him  to  a  small  hotel  up-town.  At  the  Deucalion, 
as  it  was  called,  Bob  was  offered  a  bedroom  and  bath,  but 
these  seemed  so  narrow  for  his  new  importance  that  he  took 
an  adjoining  sitting-room  also.  He  went  there  now  to 
meditate  upon  his  future. 

Bob  was  in  one  of  his  frenzies.  He  called  up  Joe  Yarmy 
to  tell  him  that  he  was  ready  to  close  the  deal  and  push  on 
to  Texas.  The  Yarmys  were  out.  He  left  his  name  and 
number. 

At  some  remote  period  his  telephone  rang.  Before  he 
could  check  himself  he  had  hoped  it  was  April  calling  him 
up  to  ask  his  forgiveness.  He  was  all  too  ready  to  swap 
forgiveness  with  her.  But  it  was  Kate  that  spoke. 

Was  it  Kate  or  Fate?  He  decided  that  it  was  both.  He 
asked  for  her  brother,  and  she  said  that  Joe  was  out  and  she 
did  not  know  when  he  would  be  back — probably  not  till 
late  at  night.  • 


CHAPTER  VI 

IN  earlier  days  they  would  have  said  that  a  devil  inside 
Bob  prompted  him  to  propose  a  little  more  fresh  air. 
Kate  accepted  the  invitation  before  Bob  could  hedge.  With 
a  drunken  gambler's  recklessness,  Bob  rushed  from  the 
Deucalion,  beckoned  a  passing  taxicab,  and  gave  the  driver 
the  number  of  Miss  Yarmy's  hotel,  which  was  also  up-town 
and  not  far  distant.  Temptation  is  usually  handy. 

Kate  did  not  keep  Bob  waiting.  Temptation  is  also  punct 
ual.  She  was  looking  as  rosy  and  guileless  as  Temptation 
must  to  do  business.  She  greeted  Bob  with  warm  good- 
fellowship. 

It  was  a  luxury  to  his  lonely  soul  to  sit  beside  her.  The 
taxicab  was  a  gliding  ingle-nook  and  the  twilight  was  cur 
tains  of  intimacy. 

"Mighty  nice  of  you  to  take  me  out,"  Kate  said.  "I  was 
going  almost  crazy,  worrying  over  Joe." 

"  You  poor  thing !"  Bob  moaned.  "What's  the  matter  with 
Joe?" 

"Oh,  I  oughtn't  to  speak  of  it,  but — well,  he  got  out  of 
his  uniform  to-day  and  into  his  bad  habits." 

"  Everybody  is  getting  out  of  uniform  and  into  bad  habits," 
said  Bob. 

"The  poor  boy!  Oh,  it's  terrible,  but — well,  he  has  been 
drinking.  It's  the  idleness.  I've  got  to  get  him  back  home 
to  work.  This  big  wicked  city  is  no  place  for  him  or  for  me. 
It's  funny  how  much  lonelier  you  can  be  in  a  big  city  than 
off  by  yourself.  Had  you  ever  noticed  it?" 

This  struck  Bob  as  a  very  profound  observation.  Kate 
was  wise,  and  yet  she  was  pitiful.  He  felt  awfully  sorry 
for  her,  but  proud  to  know  her.  Her  solicitude  for  her 
brother  touched  him  more  deeply.  He  wished  he  had  some 
nice  girl  to  be  solicitous  for  him.  April  was  always  so 
solicitous  for  her  own  rights. 

1 08 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Suddenly,  thinking  about  April,  he  found  that  he  was 
holding  Kate's  right  hand  in  his  left  and  patting  it  with  his 
right.  She  put  her  left  hand  on  top  of  his  and  squeezed 
it  gratefully,  then  withdrew  her  fingers  from  his,  shyly. 

He  felt  appallingly  lonely  without  her  hand  to  hold. 
He  took  it  again,  and  she  humored  the  orphan.  They  rode 
a  long  while  with  palms  joined.  They  were  as  ingenuous 
as  the  two  Babes  in  the  Wood,  though  they  did  not  look  it, 
there  in  their  taxi  in  Central  Park. 

They  came  out  of  the  Park  at  Fifty-ninth  Street,  and  the 
taxi-driver  turned  round  and  opened  the  door  to  ask,  "Where 
do  we  go  from  here?" 

Bob  laughed,  remembering  the  story  a  lieutenant-com 
mander  of  the  navy  had  told  him:  When  his  destroyer  was 
torpedoed  by  a  submarine  and  he  had  been  hauled  onto  a 
bit  of  wreckage,  a  sailor  had  swung  up  from  the  depths  and 
paused,  before  he  clambered  aboard,  to  salute  and  say: 

"Well,  sir,  and  where  do  we  go  from  here?" 

Bob  felt  as  reckless  as  that.  His  future  with  April  had 
been  torpedoed.  He  was  alone  on  a  raft  with  as  pretty  a 
girl.  What  did  he  care  where  they  went  from  there?  He 
turned  to  Kate. 

"How'd  you  like  to  dine  with  me?"  he  asked,  eagerly. 

"Just  us  two?"  Kate  faltered.    "Would  it  be  all  right?" 

"Sure  it  would!  You'd  be  all  right  anywhere!"  said  Bob, 
with  masterfulness,  to  her.  To  the  driver  he  said.  "Take 
us  to  the  Knickerbocker." 

There  was  a  dancing  space  at  the  Knickerbocker,  and  after 
he  had  ordered  a  consoling  and  encouraging  dinner  Bob 
suggested  a  dance.  Kate  accepted  shyly. 

She  made  a  delicious  armful,  and  as  she  nestled  to  him 
Bob  murmured : 

"This  is  a  little  different  from  dancing  on  the  pavement 
in  Houston,  eh?" 

As  she  nodded  her  head  her  hat  brushed  his  cheek 
tauntingly,  but  she  murmured  into  his  manly  chest: 

"I'm  a  little  homesick,  though." 

"  Me,  too,"  he  answered,  gallantly.  "Texas  is  like  home  to 
me.  You  Texas  girls  are — well —  For  lack  of  a  bright 
enough  word,  he  held  her  a  little  snugger.  She  laughed, 
whether  at  his  lack  of  vocabulary  or  his  excess  of  cordiality 

109 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

he  could  not  tell.  But  she  laughed,  and  so  he  hugged  her 
a  little  snugger  yet.  And  now  she  sighed.  And  the  music 
ended,  leaving  Bob  strangely  bewildered. 

They  danced  several  times  between  the  courses  of  the 
dinner,  and  Bob's  regard  for  Kate  modulated  rapidly,  but 
without  shock,  from  tender  friendship  and  sympathy  through 
an  ambiguous  mood  to  a  playful  flirtatiousness,  thence,  by 
way  of  very  trepid  advances,  to  the  border  of  audacity  and 
desire.  Kate  was  apparently  too  innocent  or  too  sad  to 
resent  his  adventure. 

Bob  and  Kate  lingered  and  danced  after  they  had  finished 
their  coffee. 

Bob  felt  a  remorseful  recklessness  as  he  sank  into  his  chair, 
and  then  it  seemed  as  if  April  had  taken  a  place  at  the  table. 
More  reproachful  than  the  bloody  ghost  of  Banquo,  she 
drooped  in  her  somber  girlhood.  Bob  was  bitterly  ashamed 
of  himself.  He  was  a  dual  traitor  to  April's  trust  and  to 
Kate's  friendship.  But  while  his  soul  scolded  him  for  a 
blackguard,  he  had  not  the  courage  to  flee  from  the  unwitting 
temptress.  One  finds  himself  committed  to  finishing  a  flir 
tation  as  well  as  a  war.  He  made  a  feeble  effort  at  an 
armistice  and  said: 

"I  don't  suppose  you'd  care  to  gorto  a  show,  would  you?" 
He  hoped  she  would  say  that  she  had  to  go  home.  Or  at 
least  he  hoped  he  hoped  so.  But  she  said: 

"I'd  love  it — that  is,  if  you  want  to." 

"I'm  dying  to,"  said  Bob,  casting  his  last  shred  of  honor 
overboard  with  regret. 

He  bought  tickets  at  the  news-stand.  They  came  high 
— five  dollars  apiece.  New  York  was  so  overpopulated  and 
theater-mad  that  only  an  accident  left  these  tickets  in  the 
hands  of  the  agency.  A  few  months  later  New  York  evenings 
would  be  desperately  empty,  for  the  great  strike  of  the  actors 
against  the  managers  would  break  out  and  rage  for  weeks, 
adding  one  more  to  the  numberless  labor  agitations  that 
made  peace  more  warlike  than  the  war. 

A  hang-over  from  the  war  was  the  tax  on  theater  tickets. 
Bob,  who  had  paid  a  war  tax  on  all  his  costly  clothes  from 
socks  to  pajamas,  added  a  dollar  tax  to  his  ten  dollars' 
worth  of  theater  tickets.  This  tithe  on  pleasure  hurt  him 
more  than  the  ten,  warning  him  anew  that  what  funds  were 

no 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

left  of  his  final  pay  were  running  low.  He  would  soon  have 
to  nibble  at  the  deposit  in  the  bank.  It  would  be  wise  to 
get  out  of  this  exorbitant  town  and  into  the  simplicities  of 
oleaginous  Texas  as  promptly  as  possible. 

The  play  was  typical  of  a  theatrical  season  in  which  almost 
all  of  the  farces  had  beds  in  them,  with  most  of  the  characters 
in  or  under  the  beds.  The  name  of  this  piece  was,  "Up  in 
Mabel's  Room."  It  concerned  the  agonies  of  a  lover  engaged 
to  one  girl  and  desperately  anxious  to  recover  from  a  previous 
flame  an  embroidered  chemise  he  had  rashly  given  her. 
Underwear  had  been  so  vividly  and  incessantly  pictured 
in  the  advertising  pages  of  the  most  prudish  magazines 
that  it  was  bound  to  reach  the  stage,  which  is  always  a  few 
years  late  in  taking  up  popular  themes. 

There  is  no  particular  reason  for  being  afraid  of  under 
wear,  since  all  decent  people  wear  it,  except  when  they  go 
bathing  in  public  or  in  private,  or  go  to  bed;  besides,  it  is 
to  be  seen  flaunting  on  a  million  clothes-lines.  But  people 
have  to  have  something  to  be  shocked  about,  so,  in  the  year 
19 1  p,  they  decided  to  be  shocked  about  two  of  the  most 
familiar  things  in  the  world,  beds  and  underclothes.  From 
what  childish,  homely  material  do  we  overgrown  brats, 
never  quite  escaping  from  the  nursery,  construct  our  codes  of 
morals,  immorals,  religions,  etiquettes,  terrors,  and  delicious 
naughtinesses!  Preachers  were  going  into  spasms  over  the 
ruinous  effect  of  such  diversions — as  if  they  made  any 
difference. 

The  farce  was  ingenious,  and  since  things  that  startle 
prudery  are  always  twice  as  amusing  as  polite  wit,  the  laugh 
ter  was  uproarious.  Bob  yelped  and  rocked  with  the 
rocking  house.  He  dared  not  look  at  Kate,  but  he  could  hear 
her  shriek.  This  shocked  him  until  he  realized  that  she  was 
doubtless  too  honest  to  be  a  prude;  then  he  liked  her  better 
for  not  pretending  to  be  prissy  and  prunesy. 

After  the  farce,  Kate  permitted  him  to  persuade  her  to 
take  supper  on  the  New  Amsterdam  Roof,  where  they  danced 
some  more  and  witnessed  a  midnight  entertainment  on  a 
platform  that  came  sliding  out  mysteriously  into  the  room. 
The  new  shimmy  dance  was  marvelously  exploited  by  young 
women  who  had  learned  to  shiver  their  skins  as  horses  do. 
Its  origin,  according  to  history,  was  the  effort  to  shake  off 

in 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

a  chemise  without  seizing  it  with  the  hands.  It  was  not 
supposed  to  be  proper  to  dance  it  unprofessionally,  but  it 
was  considered  permissible  to  watch  it  and  laugh. 

On  the  way  back  to  Kate's  hotel,  along  about  i  A.M.,  Bob 
was  a  trifle  reckless;  but,  fortunately  for  him,  Kate  would  not 
flirt.  She  insisted  on  talking  about  Texas  and  oil-wells 
so  that  she  might  have  something  definite  to  tell  Joe;  and 
at  last  Bob  told  her  that  he  would  be  ready  to  start  at  once, 
and  would  draw  his  money  from  the  bank  the  next  morning. 
She  was  so  relieved  that  she  gave  a  little  cry  of  relief  and 
swayed  toward  him. 

He  caught  her  in  his  arms  and  would  have  kissed  her,  but 
she  put  her  fingers  between  her  mouth  and  his  lip  and  whis 
pered: 

"Oh,  please  don't!" 

She  guaranteed  to  have  Joe  sober  and  prepared  to  close 
the  deal  with  Bob  on  the  transfer  of  cash,  and  Bob  made 
another  effort  to  plant  a  good-night  on  her  lips,  but  she 
eluded  him  with  a  kindly  smile,  and  he  left  it  on  the  back  of 
her  hand  instead. 

Instead  of  riding  to  his  rooms,  he  dismissed  the  taxi  and 
struck  out  through  the  Park  afoot.  He  was  in  a  swirl  of 
excitements. 

To  be  in  love  with  one  maiden  and  flitting  about  another 
was  not  noble,  but  it  was — whew,  but  it  was  interesting! 
It  would  have  been  hard  to  say  which  really  delighted  Bob 
the  more,  his  remorse  at  his  own  devilishness  or  his  fascinated 
dread  of  what  his  uncontrollable  daring  might  lead  him  to. 

Youth  has  peculiar  privileges  of  ecstasy.  It  has  not  had 
time  to  grow  indifferent  to  ideals  and  to  the  beauty  of 
fidelity.  It  has  not  learned  how  dismally  the  most  promising 
intrigues  repeat  the  same  patterns  and  lapse  to  the  most 
dreary  conclusions. 

Bob  knew  that  he  was  inhabited  by  a  devil,  a  most  peril 
ous  yet  a  most  entertaining  tenant.  He  was  not  lonely,  at 
least,  when  his  devil  was  turning  his  brain  into  a  debat 
ing  society  with  a  better  self  presenting  little  but  platitudes 
and  don'ts.  Better  selves  are  dull  company,  because  they 
deal  in  truth  and  wisdom,  two  subjects  in  which  few  people 
are  interested. 

112 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  next  morning  Bob  stared  at  his  face  as  he  shaved  it, 
and  called  himself  a  low-down  hound,  a  no-account  com 
mon  scoundrel  who  had  forgotten  his  pledge  to  the  finest 
girl  on  earth,  and  had  sullied  with  his  contemptible  ambition 
the  next  finest.  But  the  face  in  the  mirror  did  not  seem  to 
take  the  abuse  very  seriously. 

He  scowled  with  his  brows,  but  when  his  razor  had  brought 
away  the  lather  from  his  lips  he  found  a  grin  lurking  there 
— a  smile  that  would  not  come  off.  He  told  himself  that 
he  was  no  more  to  be  trusted  with  nice  women  than  with 
good  liquor,  and  that  he  must  never  go  near  temptation  again. 
But  he  could  not  disown  a  certain  smirk  of  satisfaction  at  his 
high  spirit.  He  was  so  horrified  with  himself  that  he  was 
quite  proud  of  it. 

He  loved  restive  colts,  and  the  more  dangerous  they  were 
the  more  he  liked  to  ride  them.  He  felt  as  if  a  part  of  his 
soul  were  a  restive  colt,  a  thoroughbred  of  high  mettle.  It 
might  bolt  with  him,  and  it  might  leap  over  a  cliff  with  him, 
but- — well,  it  was  royal  sport. 

While  he  was  wondering  how  many  women's  lives  he  would 
wreck  before  he  settled  down,  a  hall-boy  brought  to  his  door 
a  telegram.  He  wondered  which  of  his  two  conquests  had 
been  too  impatient  to  wait  for  him  to  be  up  and  dressed. 

He  tore  open  the  envelop.  It  contained  a  night  letter, 
from  his  mother. 

The  sight  of  that  word  at  the  end  of  the  message  shocked 
and  humbled  him  as  if  she  had  walked  in  upon  him.  He  felt 
a  need  for  gathering  a  robe  of  decency  about  his  soul  and 
flinging  the  thoughts  he  had  been  wearing  into  the  soiled- 
clothes  hamper.  He  felt  that  he  had  been  cruel  as  well  as 
evil,  and  a  deep  contrition  sobered  him  as  he  read. 

His  mother  did  not  rebuke  him  as  he  deserved  or  charge 
him  with  ingratitude.  She  simply  said: 

"3 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Your  darling  letter  received  so  sorry  you  had  so  much  trouble  getting 
free  and  have  to  go  right  into  business  [without  any  vacation  don't 
bother  to  come  here  I  will  run  up  to  New  York  and  stop  with  Cousin 
Sally  will  wire  train  later  dearest  love  dying  to  see  my.boy. 

MOTHER. 

The  meek  tenderness  of  this  was  more  scathing  than  any 
reproach.  She  had  given  him  to  his  country  and  waited  the 
whole  war  through  in  ceaseless  dread.  When  he  came  back 
he  could  not  spare  the  time  to  run  down  into  Virginia  to 
greet  her!  And  she  would  drag  her  poor  self  all  the  way  to 
New  York  for  a  sight  of  him. 

Bob  cursed  himself  for  an  ingrate  and  a  reprobate  and 
vowed  that  he  would  never  neglect  his  mother  again.  It 
was  not  a  new  vow. 

Incidentally  it  simplified  matters  immensely  to  have  his 
mother  in  New  York,  for  he  could  enjoy  a  little  visit  with  her 
and  then  rush  down  to  Texas  before  the  multitudes  of  oil- 
borers  had  drained  off  all  the  supply. 

After  breakfast  he  went  to  the  bank  to  draw  the  money 
to  pay  for  his  share  in  the  Yarmy  property.  The  streets 
were  notably  thronged,  even  for  those  crowded  days.  He 
could  not  get  to  Fifth  Avenue,  not  to  say  across  it.  He  had 
to  climb  down  into  the  subway  at  Grand  Central  Station 
and  ride  across  beneath  the  level  to  Times  Square,  climb  out 
again  and  walk  back  to  Sixth  Avenue. 

West  Forty -fourth  Street  was  bottled  up  with  people 
who  could  not  squeeze  into  the  dense  mob  along  the  Avenue. 
Bob  had  to  thread  his  way  slowly  and  squirmily  through  the 
massed  flesh  to  the  front  door  of  the  .bank.  And  then  he 
found  it  closed  for  the  holiday! 

He  took  advantage  of  the  post  on  the  steps  that  he  had 
obtained  by  false  pretenses  and  remained  put.  It  was 
always  excusable  for  one  to  cheat  a  crowd  of  strangers. 

The  occasion  of  the  holiday  and  the  mob  was  the  parade 
of  the  Twenty-seventh  Division  just  in  from  France.  It 
was  made  up  of  New  York  National  Guardsmen,  and  the 
metropolis  had  a  village  affection  for  it. 

At  length  a  sonorous  music  proclaimed  the  approach  of 
the  troops.  They  had  been  delayed  in  their  passage  through 
the  unmanageable  multitudes  at  the  Victory  Arch.  At  their 
head  rode  Major-General  O'Ryan,  who  had  fought  for  the 

114 


MONEY. GOES  OUT 

National  Guard  through  years  of  discouragement  and  had 
succeeded  in  getting  past  innumerable  obstacles  to  his  op 
portunity  in  France.  He  and  his  men  had  been  with  the 
British  under  Haig  and  had  helped  crack  the  Hindenburg 
line. 

The  soldiers  were  in  their  own  home  town  now,  and  each 
of  the  regiments  had  its  partizans.  They  were  all  strangers 
to  Bob,  but  he  felt  the  pride  of  country.  Tears  flooded  his 
eyes  at  the  sight  of  the  vast  banner  with  its  constellation  of 
gold  stars,  each  gleaming  for  a  boy  left  dead  in  France. 

When  the  regiments  had  passed,  one  after  another,  an 
army  of  wounded  followed  in  an  almost  endless  flow  of 
automobiles  three  abreast.  In  the  front  seat  of  each  car 
sat  two  women  in  uniform.  They  all  looked  incredibly 
smart  in  their  Motor  Corps  blouses.  There  were  hundreds 
of  them,  and  they  could  not  conceal  the  rapture  they  felt 
in  being  a  part  of  the  victorious  army. 

It  seemed  as  if  all  the  maidens  of  New  York  had  formed 
a  Panathenaic  procession.  Bob's  expert  eyes  appraised  them 
according  to  his  standards  of  beauty. 

Suddenly  he  recognized  April.  His  heart  leaped  with 
love  of  her.  He  had  never  seen  her  look  so  attractive. 
The  wounded  men  in  the  back  seat  seemed  to  be  proud  of 
their  chauffeuse.  She  checked  the  car  abruptly  as  an  im 
becile  woman  with  a  fringe  of  children  darted  across  the 
Avenue.  She  shot  the  car  forward  to  keep  the  alinement. 

Bob  stared  after  her  with  devout  eyes.  Love  came  back 
in  a  flood.  His  frivolous  courtship  of  Kate  startled  his 
memory  and  left  a  grimace  of  shame  that  hurt.  He  saw 
how  wretched  a  thing  it  is  to  deal  lightly  with  love  and  faith, 
to  juggle  hearts  and  gamble  with  ideals. 

He  consecrated  himself  anew  to  April.  He  cast  aside 
even  his  pitiful  little  yearning  to  get  richer  than  she.  He 
resolved  to  give  her  a  chance  at  the  Yarmy  investment. 
As  soon  as  he  could  escape  from  the  crowd  he  telephoned 
to  the  Yarmys  that  the  bank  was  closed. 

If  he  had  not  seen  April  he  would  have  called  on  Miss 
Yarmy.  But  he  remembered  that  he  was  not  to  be  trusted 
with  temptation,  and  he  kept  his  distance.  He  tried  to 
telephone  to  April  and  beg  her  to  receive  his  prodigal  heart 
again,  but  she  was  away  all  day,  and  when  he  called  her  by 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

wire  in  the  evening  he  learned  that  she  had  gone  out  to 
dinner. 

As  he  languished  in  an  almost  unbearable  exile  Kate 
Yarmy  telephoned  him  and  implied  that  she  was  alone  and 
would  be  glad  to  talk  with  him.  Her  voice  had  a  wistful 
appeal  in  it  and  a  loneliness  that  woke  a  fellow-feeling.  But 
he  was  honorable  enough  to  lie  out  of  the  opportunity, 
alleging  an  unbreakable  engagement. 

He  suffered  such  ridiculous  agonies  over  the  fact  that  he 
might  not  spend  his  evening  with  one  young  woman  and 
must  not  spend  it  with  the  other  that  he  grew  impatient 
of  both  their  claims  on  his  heart.  He  asked  himself  what 
sort  of  an  it  he  was,  anyway,  to  be  making  women  so  im 
portant  in  his  life.  Women  were  a  secondary  consideration, 
after  all,  in  any  successful  man's  career — very  nice  at  times 
for  a  little  while,  but  disconcerting  as  a  business  man's 
main  business. 

The  next  morning  he  woke  up  in  the  same  dour  con 
viction.  He  resolved  to  bring  April  and  Kate  together  and 
let  them  fight  it  out. 

He  telephoned  April,  and  she  consented  to  see  the  fasci 
nating  Miss  Yarmy  and  her  brother.  He  telephoned  Miss 
Yarmy,  and  she  consented  to  call  on  Miss  Summerlin  with 
out  waiting  to  be  called  on. 

To  prove  that  he  was  a  business  man  and  not  a  lady's 
man,  Bob  went  to  the  bank  and  drew  five  thousand  dollars 
in  five  crisp  new  bills.  He  was  determined  to  invest  it  as 
he  saw  fit,  without  regard  to  April's  whims  or  plans.  Women, 
he  repeated,  were  a  secondary  consideration  to  him. 

Men  are  apt  to  say  this  of  themselves,  and  to  say  of 
women  that  most  of  their  life  is  given  up  to  love.  This  is 
as  manifestly  false  as  most  of  the  popular  superstitions. 

Women  give  love  perhaps  even  less  consideration  than 
men  do.  At  least,  when  April  and  Kate  learned  that  they 
were  to  meet  in  Bob's  presence,  no  attention  was  paid  to 
Bob,  but  they  thought  of  each  other.  Kate  was  trying  to 
dress  herself  up  so  that  she  would  look  as  well  as  April. 
April  was  thinking  of  that,  but  also  of  the  look  of  her  home. 
She  inspected  it  as  if  it  were  about  to  receive  a  visit  from 
royalty. 

One  thing  was  certain:  this  was  no  time  to  be  caught  with 

116 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

dust  on  the  piano  and  the  rugs.  She  ordered  the  protesting 
Pansy  to  send  the  elevator-boy  post-haste  for  the  vacuum- 
cleaner. 

Pansy  was  so  slow  and  so  surly  that  April  snatched  the 
telephone  from  her  hand  and  gave  the  message  herself. 

"That  old  vacuum-cleaner  man,  you  know — that  I  met 
in  your  elevator." 

"Yassum.    Pafessa  Taxta,  you  mean." 

"That's  the  one.  Get  him  here  just  as  soon  as  you  can. 
I  must  have  him  this  morning  without  fail." 

"  Yassum.    I  reckon  I  kin  git  him." 

April  hung  up  the  receiver,  little  dreaming  how  important 
a  step  in  her  destiny  she  had  taken  when  she  summoned 
that  old  darky.  She  had  invoked  a  genie,  an  ebony  god  in 
a  machine  and  with  a  machine. 

And  now  the  fates  began  to  take  a  lively  interest  in  Bob 
Taxter's  future,  and  a  grand  rendezvous  was  appointed  for 
its  decision.  April  and  her  mother,  and  Kate  and  Joe,  and 
Bob's  mother  would  all  be  on  hand,  and  Bob  himself  would 
make  his  usual  desperate  fight.  But  old  Uncle  Zeb  would 
master  them  alL  He  had  waited  long  for  his  day.  But  it 
was  here. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"\  X  7  HAT  shall  I  wear,  mother?" 

W  "Why,  you  look  perfectly  lovely  in  what  you 
have  on,  honey!" 

"But  Bob  has  seen  me  in  this  uniform  until  he's  sick  of  it, 
and  so  am  I.  Thank  Heaven,  I  got  out  of  the  service  to-day 
and  I  can  be  a  woman  again.  Besides,  that  creature  will 
be  dressed  like  a  house  afire,  and  I'll  need  every  trump  I 
have — if  I  have  any.  What  shall  I  put  on?" 

"Just  what  effect  do  you  want  to  create?" 

"  I  want  to  be  very  cold  and  hurt  and  mistreated  and  angry 
and  indifferent  and  ravishingly  beautiful  and  appealing  and 
unattainable  and — " 

"Put  on  your  blue  dress." 

April  nodded  and  climbed  a  step  or  two,  then  paused  and 
shook  her  head. 

"That  isn't  a  very  late  model,  though." 

"Bob  will  never  know  the  difference." 

"But  that  woman  will.  And  I  want  to  deal  her  such  a 
blow  that  she'll  feel  like  kneeling  and  imploring  me  to  tell 
her  the  name  of  my  dressmaker.  And  I  won't." 

These  blood-curdling  sentiments  seemed  as  natural  to 
Mrs.  Summerlin  as  a  cutthroat  policy  seems  to  a  business 
man  when  his  son  enunciates  it.  She  pondered  how  best  to 
stifle  competition  against  her  daughter's  monopoly  of  Bob 
Taxter's  love. 

"That  apple-green  is  ve'y  smart.  I  don't  think  it  will 
make  you  look  as  well  in  Bob's  eyes,  but  it  will  certainly 
put  the  eye  out  of  that  woman." 

"Then  I'll  wear  the  green,"  said  April,  grimly. 

People  have  long  expressed  surprise  at  learning  that  women 
do  not  dress  for  men,  but  against  other  women.  Yet  men  do 
not  run  their  businesses  to  please  their  wives;  they  hardly 
run  them  to  please  their  customers;  they  largely  run  them 
to  disconcert  their  rivals. 

118 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Men  laugh  at  women  for  becoming  sheep  when  the  Wat- 
teau  Shepherdess  of  Fashion  waves  her  beribboned  crook. 
Yet  men  incessantly  copy  one  another's  methods,  their  shop- 
fronts,  their  window-displays,  their  circulars,  their  letter 
heads,  advertising  copy,  catch-phrases,  price-marks,  every 
thing.  Does  one  savings-bank  build  a  Greek  temple  for  its 
new  home?  Straightway  all  the  other  banks  must  squander 
their  deposits  on  squat  marble  houses.  Does  one  cigarette 
manufacturer  take  a  full-page  advertisement  in  colors? 
Immediately  all  cigarettes  must  have  the  same  blazon. 
Does  one  firm  send  out  letters  or  catalogues  in  new-art  or 
rococo  style?  Every  respectable  firm  must  fall  in  line  at 
once. 

Women  are  berated  for  a  willingness  to  bankrupt  every 
body  within  reach  in  order  to  secure  the  maximum  of  gor- 
geousness.  Yet  why  should  a  woman  mail  herself  to  the 
public  in  a  cheap  envelop  when  her  husband  is  sending  out 
his  bills  and  receipts  in  engraved  bond? 

The  war  had  put  a  check  on  all  sorts  of  businesses  and  all 
sorts  of  vanities.  Steel  and  coal  were  withheld  from  un 
necessary  industries,  just  as  silk  and  sugar  were  withheld 
from  unrestricted  consumption,  because  all  four  commodities 
were  needed  for  cannon,  transports,  airplanes,  explosives. 

But  the  armistice  had  taken  from  women  as  well  as  men 
the  inspiration  of  patriotic  sacrifice  and  the  pressure  of 
public  opinion,  and  both  sexes  were  as  eager  to  resume  gaiety 
and  business  as  a  widow  is  to  be  out  of  threadbare  crape. 

Spring  and  summer  led  the  way.  With  an  extravagance 
that  made  the  gaudiest  shop-window  look  drab,  trees  and 
plants  and  birds  were  riotous  with  dressmaking  and  every 
form  of  adornment.  Birds  were  togging  themselves  in  radi 
ant  millinery  at  a  vast  expense,  and  flocking  to  parties  and 
prize-fights.  Plants  were  spendthrift  on  new  wall-paper  and 
new  signboards  to  attract  drummers  from  the  beehives 
and  other  luxury  factories.  The  whole  earth,  having  thrown 
off  its  snow  tarpaulins,  was  weaving  green  carpets  and  rugs 
of  intricate  design  and  deep  pile.  The  cost  of  it  in  labor, 
energy,  and  heat  was  beyond  calculation. 

Yet  against  the  eternal  fever  of  spring  in  human  blood, 
economists  and  moralists  were  prescribing  the  same  old 
futile  pills  of  advice  in  editorial,  cartoon,  and  sermon. 
9  up 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Everybody  has  always  tried  to  compel  women  to  wear  more 
clothes  at  less  expense,  and  history  is  strewn  with  the  wrecks 
that  failed.  Tyrants  have  threatened  and  administered 
death;  priests  have  prayed  and  threatened  torment  after 
death;  satirists  have  poured  boiling  oil  over  the  follies  of 
fashion.  And  none  of  them  succeeded.  When  the  stout 
Romans  with  their  terrific  authority  passed  sumptuary 
laws  the  Roman  women  stormed  the  Capitol  and  forced  their 
repeal.  Women  do  not  usually  pay  so  much  attention  to 
male  protests. 

One  thing  has  always  dominated  their  thoughts:  unfash 
ionable  clothes  are  a  public  disgrace.  A  woman  who  wears 
them  is  in  the  stocks  or  on  a  high  pillory.  She  will  not  go 
about  branded  any  more  than  a  business  man  will  carry  a 
sandwich-board  stating  that  he  is  a  failure. 

The  virtuous  wife  and  daughter  feel  that  they  have  a 
perfect  right  to  look  as  well  as  the  vicious  women.  Other 
wise  where  is  the  reward  of  virtue?  And  where  would  the 
world  go  if  all  the  good  women  went  dowdy  and  let  all  the 
bad  women  ply  their  trade  without  competition  in  the  arts 
and  graces  of  delight?  But  the  everlasting  vanity  of  protest 
against  vanity  has  never  discouraged  it  and  never  will. 
Critics  are  doomed  to  protest,  as  butterflies  to  bloom  and 
frivol.  There  are  cautious  and  saving  women  as  there  are 
meek  and  canny  plants  and  birds.  But  what  they  call  their 
"virtue"  is  as  much  their  nature  as  what  they  call  "vice" 
in  the  flamboyant  ones  is  theirs. 

The  igip-ers  were  more  excited  about  the  height  of 
prices  than  about  almost  any  of  the  other  exciting  things. 
Yet  prices  also  were  simply  doing  what  they  had  always 
done.  No  war  has  been  so  devastating  that  it  has  not  been 
followed  by  hysterics  of  gaiety,  by  ballooning  of  expenditures, 
and  by  a  soaring  quality  in  prices.  Afterward  the  balloons 
burst,  and  all  the  shopkeepers  and  labor  unions  in  the  world 
could  not  keep  up  prices  and  wages. 

And  of  course  it  was  not  so  much  that  prices  and  wages 
went  up  as  that  money  went  down.  Foreign  exchange  shot 
the  chutes.  In  1919  the  pound  sterling,  that  had  once  been 
equal  to  $4.87,  fell  away  to  $4.13;  by  the  second  month  of 
1920  it  had  sagged  to  $3.19,  far  below  its  previous  worst  in 
history.  The  franc  also  broke  all  the  records  and  fell  below 

120 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

seven  cents;  the'lira  below  eight.  The  proud  German  mark 
sank  from  twenty-five  cents  to  practical  nothingness,  and 
the  Russian  ruble  went  out  entirely. 

It  was  very  flattering  to  the  Almighty  Dollar,  but  the 
dollar  Himself  felt  like  thirty  cents  in  the  market.  A  three- 
dollar  office-boy  had  to  have  twelve  dollars  a  week  if  he 
were  to  live  well  enough  to  insult  visitors.  The  twelve- 
dollar-a-week  wrapper-addresser  had  to  have  twenty-five 
dollars  or  the  circulars  would  stick  in  the  mailing-room. 
The  postmen,  the  firemen,  and  the  policemen  had  to  be 
boosted  in  wages  or  the  world  would  stop. 

The  policemen  of  Boston  dealt  a  hard  blow  to  the  pacifists 
by  calling  a  strike;  instantly  the  very  hub  of  culture  was 
changed  to  a  black  forest  of  wolves,  while  little  shopkeepers 
guarded  their  own  cabins  with  guns.  In  Brooklyn  two 
unions  of  funeral-coach  drivers  fell  by  the  ears  and  stopped 
a  funeral,  compelling  the  mourners  to  change  carriages. 

Everybody  struck — telephone  girls,  chorus  girls,  steel 
workers,  street-car  men,  railroad  men,  builders.  People 
began  to  talk  of  forming  a  union  of  the  middle  classes  to 
strike  against  the  strikers.  Yet  somehow  the  world  rolled 
on  and  kept  coming  to  the  same  old  degrees  of  the  circle 
that  it  always  touches  successively  in  its  everlasting  whirl. 

Women  wrung  their  hands  and  wailed  at  the  cost  of  finery, 
but  they  bought  more  of  it  than  ever.  Their  men-folk  cursed 
and  prophesied  disaster,  but  they  paid  with  the  left  hand,  for 
one  exorbitance,  the  exorbitance  they  had  gathered  with  the 
right  hand  from  some  one  else. 

Pessimists  warned  that  a  crash  would  come.  It  was  a 
safe  prophecy.  Crashes  always  come.  When  you  are  slicing 
bacon  there  is  small  risk  in  foresaying  that  whatever  streak 
the  knife  is  in  will  give  way  to  one  of  the  other  kind,  though 
it  is  not  safe  to  say  just  how  soon.  The  fat  is  always  followed 
by  the  lean;  hence  we  have  pessimists  justified;  but  then, 
the  lean  is  always  followed  by  the  fat;  and  therefore  the 
optimists  flourish  for  a  while.  And  so  on  and  on,  till  we  come 
to  the  rind  and  the  edge  of  the  bacon.  And  from  where  we 
are,  we  cannot  tell  how  thick  the  rasher  of  this  world  is. 

April  Summerlin  and  her  mother  were  discovering  that 
their  legacy  of  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  dollars, 
all  told,  had  actually  dwindled  to  a  value  of  about  forty 

121 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

thousand  at  the  moment,  and  was  still  on  its  way  down. 
But  the  depreciation  of  money  did  not  seem  to  justify  any 
depreciation  of  personal  appearance.  They  still  had  to 
"sell  themselves,"  in  the  trade-word  of  the  day,  in  their 
market  at  market  prices. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  must  look  like  a  lady  of  means,  and  Miss 
Summerlin  must  be  able  to  hold  up  her  head  among  the  girls 
whose  business  it  was  to  get  and  to  hold  social  prestige. 
April  would  be  young  only  once,  and  her  mother  would  be 
middle-aged  only  once.  They  were  of  the  sort  that  would 
rather  die  than  be  conspicuously  inferior  to  their  neighbors. 
This  instinct  has  its  value  in  keeping  people  good  or  whole 
somely  circumspect;  and  it  is  impossible  to  set  the  bounds 
to  an  instinct. 

You  might  talk  to  such  people  till  the  cows  come  home, 
but  you  would  not  change  them.  April  was  as  moral  and 
as  modest  as  the  average,  and  that  is  about  all  that  morals 
and  modesty  amount  to.  If  a  girl  in  her  nineteen-nineteens 
had  begun  to  wear  the  gowns  that  girls  had  worn  in  their 
eighteen-sixties,  she  would  have  thought  it  perfectly  seemly 
to  wear  a  very  low  corsage  and  a  skirt  like  a  parachute.  She 
would  have  blushed  only  slightly  when  the  wind  shifted  the 
parachute  so  as  to  disclose  to  the  passers-by  the  entire  columns 
of  her  highly  ornate  ankle-length,  hip-height  pantalets. 

If  any  one  had  asked  a  nice  girl  of  crinoline  times  to  appear 
publicly  in  a  1919  Motor  Corps  costume,  she  would  very 
properly  have  preferred  to  commit  suicide.  In  1919  April 
would  very  properly  have  preferred  poison  to  pantalets, 
and  no  money  could  have  seduced  her  into  parading  gusty 
Broadway  in  the  voluminous  peep-show  of  1864. 

Now  that  she  was  leaving  breeches  for  skirts,  she  would  soon 
be  putting  on  an  abhorrence  of  the  Motor  Corps  costume. 
She  would  be  appalled  at  the  knee-length  skirts  that  she  and 
her  mother  had  worn  a  few  years  back.  At  the  beach  she 
would  wear  what  the  majority  wore.  If  it  was  decided  that 
one-piece  bathing-suits  with  bare  legs  were  to  be  the  vogue, 
she  would  go  into  the  water  and  come  out  wet  in  such  dis 
closure  with  perfect  equanimity;  and  so  would  her  sisters  and 
her  cousins  and  her  aunts — also  the  shy  wife  of  the  village 
parson  taking  a  summer  vacation  on  the  orthodox  beaches 
of  Ocean  Grove,  Asbury  Park,  and  the  various  Chautauquas. 

122 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

But  for  the  moment,  it  was  not  the  immodesty  of  the  new 
clothes  that  troubled  April,  though  all  new  clothes  are  im 
modest — and  all  old  clothes.  It  was  the  blood-curdling  in 
decency  of  the  new  prices  that  dramatized  her  plans.  She 
paused  now  to  cry  out  upon  them  as  upon  a  fiendish  con 
spiracy  in  the  market-place.  Everybody  was  accusing  every 
body  else  of  profiteering,  and  everybody  was  both  guilty 
and  helpless. 

"The  storekeepers  are  downright  thieves,"  April  cried. 
"I  haven't  shown  you  the  list  of  prices  I  got  yesterday." 
She  ran  back  down  the  steps  to  tell  her  mother  of  her  recon 
naissance  among  the  shops.  She  laid  the  budget  on  a  table, 
and  the  two  women  keened  over  it  as  if  they  were  holding  a 
wake  over  a  dead  body. 

"I  went  to  Dutilh's  to  look  at  some  of  his  importations, 
and  what  do  you  suppose  he  wants?  For  a  plain  serge  dress, 
$225!  For  a  plain  cloth  dress,  $285;  for  a  chiffon  afternoon 
dress,  $325;  for  a  three-piece  cloth  suit,  $450  to  $525;  for  an 
evening  dress,  $350  to  $450,  and  for  an  evening  wrap,  $300 
to  $600. 

"  I  told  him  he  was  a  robber,  and  he  said  that  chiffon  velvet 
cost  twenty  dollars  a  yard;  the  sewing- women's  wages  are 
three  times  what  they  were;  needles,  thread,  buttons,  hooks 
and  eyes,  have  all  gone  up.  Ribbons  are  twenty  dollars  a  yard. 

"I  went  to  several  other  places,  and  their  prices  were  all  the 
same.  I  didn't  dare  go  into  the  really  high-priced  dress 
makers'. 

"  I  went  to  the  department  stores,  and  they  are  just  about 
as  high.  They  used  to  charge  only  a  third  for  the  same 
things,  but  now  they're  all  alike.  I'm  simply  desperate.  I 
reckon  I'll  have  to  get  in  the  bathtub  and  live  there,  like 
Demosthenes  or  whoever  it  was.  Do  you  remember  the 
story  of  that  poor  girl  who  came  to  New  York  to  get  her 
trousseau  and  found  the  prices  so  high  she  decided  not  to  get 
married,  but  to  go  to  work?" 

"I  recall  it  vaguely,"  said  her  mother.  "What  was  the 
name  of  it?" 

"Oh,  the  Fourteenth  or  some  other  Commandment.  It 
was  by — oh,  what's-his-name?"  April,  being  normal,  did 
not  remember  the  names  of  the  contemporary  authors  whose 
tawdry  fiction  she  skimmed.  But  she  recalled  the  Catalogue 

123 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

of  Wraps  in  this  book,  and  she  ran  along  the  bookshelves 
to  see  if  it  were  there.  Nobody  had  borrowed  it,  and  it  was. 

April  found  the  pages  where  a  price-list  was  recorded  of  a 
modest  outfit  for  a  respectable  bride  of  1914.  It  had  looked 
ghastly  then;  it  looked  paltry  now. 

It  interested  her  to  set  down  in  two  columns  a  list  of  such 
items  as  could  be  duplicated.  She  had  been  snooping  a 
little  among  the  prices  of  bride-wear,  too;  for,  after  all,  she 
was  technically  engaged  to  Bob,  and  they  might  suddenly 
find  themselves  getting  married  before  they  could  change 
their  minds  again. 

This  was  the  list  she  made  from  the  inventory  of  trous 
seaus  that  scared  off  the  poor  bride  of  ancient  1914: 

1914  1919 

Bridal  gown $225 .  oo  $450 .  oo 

Bridal  veil 50 .  oo  125 .  oo 

Bridal  slippers 10.00  18.00 

GOWNS  AND  Suns 

Going-away  gown $125.00  $285.00 

Hat  and  shoes  to  match 50 .  oo  62 .  oo 

1  blue  gabardine  suit 145 .  oo  225 .  oo 

3  morning  dresses 75  •  oo  195 .  oo 

evening  gown 1 85 .  oo  250 .  oo 

evening  gown 125 .00  185 .  oo 

formal  lingerie  gowns: 

at 85.00  250.00 

at 75 .00  195.00 

afternoon  gown  of  charmeuse 125 .  oo  285 .  oo 

dinner  gown 185.00  300.00 

sports  suit 45 .00  95  •  oo 

2  white  corduroy  skirts 10.00  30.00 

2  white  piqu6  skirts 10.00  24.00 

2  white  linen  skirts 12 .  oo  24 .  oo 

WAISTS 

2  white  silk  wash  blouses $  12.00  $  24.00 

2  white  crSpe  wash  blouses 12.00  30.00 

2  white  handkerchief  linen  blouses 10.00  32 .00 

white  chiffon  blouse 14.00  18.00 

pink  chiffon  blouse 22 .00  32 .00 

HATS 

leghorn  hat $  45 .  oo  Same 

afternoon  hat  (large) 50 .  oo  Same 

afternoon  hat  (small) 40 .  oo  Same 

I  sports  hat 14. oo  $22.00 

I  morning  hat 25 .00  Same 

124 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 


SHOES  1914  1919 

3  pairs  satin  evening  slippers $24.00  $  54.00 

pair  walking-boots 7.00  16.00 

pair  patent-leather  slippers 10.00  18.00 

pair  white  buckskin  shoes 15.00  22 .00 

pair  tan  ties 8.00  16.00 

pair  dress  shoes 14 .  oo  20 .  oo 

pair  satin  mules 8.00  12. oo 

pair  traveling  folding-slippers 3.00  6.00 

1  pair  tennis  shoes 6 .  oo  20 .  oo 

COATS  AND  WRAPS 

silk  sweater $29.00  $  40.00 

white  corduroy  coat 15 .  oo  36 .  oo 

evening  coat,  taffeta 150.00  295.00 

heavy  motor  or  traveling  cloak 90.00  185 .00 

lace  evening  scarf 30.00  45-OO 

chiffon  evening  scarf 12.00  18.00 

PARASOLS 

dark-green  silk $  12.00  $16.00 

rose  and  ivory 1 6 .  oo  26 .  oo 

white  painted  chiffon 30.00  55 .00 

Veils $  25.00  $  35.00 

GLOVES 

6  pairs  glac6  evening  gloves $  24 .  oo  $  39 .  oo 

4  pairs  chamois  gloves 8.00  12 .00 

6  pairs  short,  white  glac6  gloves 12.00  18.00 

4  pairs  colored  suede  gloves 8.00  12.00 

LINGERIE 

3  corsets $  72.00  $120.00 

3  chiffon  evening  petticoats 1 8 .  oo  66 .  oo 

2  crfipe  petticoats 14.00  24.00 

I  taffeta  petticoat 12.00  18.00 

4  white  wash  petticoats 28 .  oo  46 .  oo 

I  fine  lingerie  petticoat 26.00  40.00 

3  princess  slips  for  lingerie  gowns 21 .00  48.00 

1  satin  morning  petticoat 12. oo  18.00 

4  nightgowns 48 .  oo  80 .  oo 

2  nightgowns 12.00  18.00 

6  silk  shirts 36.00  36.00 

6  pairs  black  silk  stockings 12.00  16.00 

2  pairs  fine  silk  stockings 12.00  18.00 

6  pairs  white  silk  stockings 12.00  16.00 

6  pairs  assorted  colors  silk  stockings 1 6 . oo  22.00 

6  cr6pe  combinations v  ...  56.00  72.00 

3  muslin  hand-embroidered  combinations .  42 .  oo  60 .  oo 
i  chiffon  tea  gown 60 .  oo  95  •  oo 

125 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

1914  1919 

I  crSpe  neglig6e $  18.00  $  36.00 

I  cr£pe  negligee 12 .  oo  26 .  oo 

I  chiffon  breakfast  jacket 24.00  36.00 

3  chiffon  and  lace  boudoir  caps 17.00  26.00 

3  crSpe  boudoir  caps 9.00  15.00 

3  dozen  handkerchiefs  with  initial 21 .  oo  36 .  oo 

This  was  the  ghastly  muster-roll  of  necessary  clothes  for  a 
nice  girl  of  supposed  wealth  to  consider.  They  stared  at  it 
and  groaned  aloud.  It  was  more  tragic  than  "King  Lear" 
(a  poor  man  who  had  three  daughters  to  dress)  and  more 
exciting  than  "The  Three  Musketeers." 

They  were  still  wagging  their  heads  in  despair  when  Pansy 
burst  in  like  a  little  black  witch. 

"Miss  Ma'y,"  she  stormed,  "that  vacuam-cleana  you 
sent  for — " 

"Yes?" 

"It'sanigga!" 

April  nodded.    "Bring  him  in  and  make  him  hurry." 

She  ran  up  the  steps  and  hastened  to  her  room,  where  she 
flung  off  her  coat  and  waistcoat,  unstrapped  her  puttees, 
unlaced  her  boots  and  pulled  off  her  breeches  with  a  mascu 
line  haste.  Then  she  began  to  make  her  new  toilet  with 
all  the  deliberation  of  a  normal  woman. 


CHAPTER  IX 

IN  the  meanwhile  Pansy  was  contemptuously  ushering 
into  the  large  studio-room  below  a  very  slow  and  very 
old,  old  darky  overburdened  with  the  impedimenta  of  a 
vacuum-cleaner.     The  long  hose  kept  slipping  from  his 
grasp,  and  he  kept  stooping  to  regain  it. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  watched  him  with  the  patience  of  a 
Southerner  for  African  deliberateness.  At  last  she  asked  a 
rather  unnecessary  question. 

"Are  you  the  vacuum-cleaner?" 

The  old  man,  hearing  a  white  voice,  let  the  hose  flop,  and 
bowed. 

"I'm  what  you  told  the  soop'intendent  to  send  up.  Is 
you  Miss  Summerlin?" 

"I  am  Mrs.  Summerlin." 

The  old  man's  eyes  whitened  with  gallant  amazement. 

"Mrs.?  I  tell  you,  some  folks  is  gittin'  married  mighty 
early  nowadays." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  smiled  tolerantly,  a  bit  pleased. 

"I  understand  that  you  do  vacuum-cleaning?" 

The  darky  gasped.  "  Does  I  do  vacurum-cleanin' ?  Why, 
Missy,  I — I  eats  it !  I  don't  like  to  talk  up  ma  own  pafession, 
but  mos'  folks  says  I  must  'a'  invented  vacurums.  But  I 
didn't.  No'm,  I  jes'  pafected  'em." 

"Yes?  And  what  is  your  price  for  cleaning  this  place 
tho'ly  up-stairs  and  down?" 

"When  you  says  'thully,'  does  you  mean  ve'y  thully  or 
jest—" 

"I  mean  ve'y  tho'ly." 

"Well,  two  dollars  used  to  be  my  reg'la  figga;  but  sence 
the  waw  prices  has  went  up  a-flyin'.  A  vacurum  costs  abote 
three  times  what  it  did.  But  I'd  work  for  Southerners  like 
you-all,  though,  for  nothin' — or  even  less.  That's  me! 
Yassum,  that's  old  Pafessa  Taxta." 

127 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

April  had  neglected  to  mention  to  her  mother  or  to  Pansy 
the  name  of  the  old  man.  Mrs.  Summerlin  was  taken  aback. 

"Did  you  say  Taxta?" 

"  Yassum,  I'm  name'  Taxta.    Pafessa  is  jest  ma  pedigree." 

"Oh!" 

There  was  a  hesitancy  in  her  tone  that  alarmed  the  old 
man.  He  hastened  to  say: 

"If  you  has  any  objection  to  the  name  o'  Taxta,  I  got 
others." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  dismissed  the  point.  "Be  as  quick  as 
you  can.  I'm  expecting  callers  any  moment." 

"I'm  right  with  ya,"  said  Professor  Taxter,  getting  into 
action  with  surprising  agility. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  started  up  the  stairs  and  murmured  to 
Pansy: 

"You  stay  and  watch  him;  and  don't  let  him  dawdle." 

Pansy  turned,  and  noting  that  the  black  interloper  on 
her  sacred  prerogative  was  unscrewing  an  electric  bulb  from 
its  socket,  charged  on  him  with  wrath. 

"Heah!    What  choo  doin'  thah?" 

The  old  man  looked  down  at  the  irate  little  woman  and 
laughed. 

"What  you  think  I'm  doin' — pullin'  a  cork?" 

"You  leave  that  bullub  be,"  Pansy  commanded,  putting 
out  her  withered  old  hand  to  check  him. 

Zeb  pushed  it  away.  "You  leave  me  be.  I  gotta  git  the 
juice  that's  in  there." 

Pansy  sneered  with  the  superiority  of  ignorance:  "Juice? 
What  choo  think  this  is — a  pear?" 

Zeb  answered  with  all  the  meekness  of  intellect:  "This 
here  vacurum  needs  eleckric  juice.  It's  nachelly  got  to  have 
it,  and  that  bulb  is  nachelly  full  of  it." 

Pansy  weakened.     "Can't  you  make  out  widout  it?" 

"I  mos'  protractedly  kinnot." 

Pansy  was  determined  to  maintain  her  authority.  "Go 
on — take  de  juice,  take  de  juice!"  she  commanded.  She 
studied  the  vacuum-cleaner  with  interest.  She  had  never 
seen  one  of  these  electric  chambermaids  close  at  hand  before. 
She  asked,  with  pretended  unconcern: 

"Say,  what  you  got  in  that  thrashin'-machine,  anyway?" 

Zeb  chuckled.     "Thrashin'-machine?    That's  jest  chuck 

128 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

full  of  nothin';  jes'  like  me — always  hongry.  Vacurums  is 
always  hongry." 

Pansy's  curiosity  overwhelmed  her  pride.  "Say,  man; 
jes'  what  is  a  vacurum,  anyhow?" 

Zeb  was  magnificent.  "Don't  you  know  what  a  vacurum 
is?  Well,  lea'  me  elucinate  yo'  ign'ance.  A  vacurum — a 
vacurum  is  a  kind  of  a — well,  speakin'  scientific,  they's 
several  kinds  of  vacurums.  This  is  a  brass  vacurum.  You 
can  git  nickel-plated  vacurums,  too,  but — well,  it's  hard  to 
explain  in  easy  words — to  a  woman.  I  got  it  all  right; 
I  got  the  vacurum  right  in  my  haid,  but  it's  hard  to  git  it 
out.  Now,  if  you — supposin'  you  want  to  make  up  a  little 
vacurum,  you  take  a  place  like  this  tube,  and  clean  it  out 
till  they  ain't  nothin'  there,  and  then  you  take  away  ev'y- 
thing  that's  left,  and  then  you  allow  the  air  to  'vaporate. 
You  understand" 

From  the  profundity  of  bewilderment  Pansy  cried,  with 
all  the  mental  ease  of  an  occultist: 

"  Oh  yes.  I  understan'  all  that.  But  what  gits  me  is  how 
you  clean  with  it.  You  take  ev'ything  away  from  nothin'. 
That's  easy;  but  how  do  you  clean  with  it?" 

Like  many  another  expert,  Zeb  was  shy  of  theory.  He 
felt  his  prestige  slipping.  He  grew  desperate: 

"How  do  you  clean  with  it?  Why — er — well,  how  could 
you  he'p  cleanin'  with  it?  Say,  what  business  is  it  of  yours, 
anyway,  how  you  clean  with  it?  Nobody's  askin'  you  to 
run  one  o'  these,  is  they  ?  You  stick  to  that  mop-rag.  That's 
somethin'  you  kin  understand." 

Pansy  may  have  seen  through  his  bluff  and  been  satisfied 
to  torment  him.  Zeb  ignored  her  as  she  him.  He  began  to 
hum  a  little  old  song  as  he  puttered  about : 

''It  takes  nine  people  to  hold  ma  bonnet; 
It  takes  ten  people  to  hold  ma  shawl; 
It  takes  nine  people  to  hold  me — 
O  Gawd,  don't  tech  on  ma  waterfall." 

As  he  hummed  he  smiled  a  patient,  reminiscent  old  smile. 

Pansy  halted  at  her  task  to  listen,  and  to  consider.  She 
started  to  speak,  checked  herself,  harkened  again,  then  spoke 
suddenly. 

"Say,  man,  where  you  hear  that  fool  song  at?" 

129 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Oh,  I  used  to  know  a  lady  what  sang  it." 

"Lady?    What  color?" 

Zeb  chuckled.  "She  was  a  kind  of  a  cheap  snuff-color, 
and  of  the  Affican  Baptis'  pasuasion." 

Pansy  tossed  her  head  and  went  out  slowly  for  her  pail 
and  brushes.  Left  alone,  Zeb  began  to  look  around.  He 
noted  a  portrait  on  the  wall,  the  life-size  and  lifelike  presen 
tation  of  a  handsome  man  in  the  uniform  of  a  Confederate 
colonel.  Beneath  the  frame  a  sword  hung  on  two  supports, 
with  a  somewhat  dingy  wrist-knot  dangling  from  the  hilt. 

Something  in  the  fiery  eyes  pierced  the  fog  of  the  negro's 
dim  vision.  He  fumbled  in  his  torn  coat  for  his  spectacles. 
He  found  them,  rubbed  his  eyes  with  an  old  handkerchief, 
then  rubbed  his  glasses,  put  them  on,  stared  at  the  picture, 
took  off  his  glasses,  and  rubbed  away  a  mist  of  tears  that 
had  come  suddenly  to  his  eyes. 

As  Pansy  came  back,  she  saw  the  Professor  waving  his 
handkerchief  at  the  portrait  and  muttering: 

"Mawnin',  Kunnel!  Who?  Me?  Oh,  I'm  Masta  Taxta's 
boy  Zeb.  Oh,  he's  right  well,  thanky,  Kunnel !  Right  well 
— yassa,  he's  right  well — oh,  yassa!" 

Pansy  set  her  pail  down  with  a  thump  that  wakened  the 
Professor  from  a  dream.  He  turned  on  her  in  a  kind  of  rage: 

"Say,  huccum  Kunnel  Beau'gard's  face  up  yonda?  And 
whaffor  your  lady  jump  when  I  allow  my  name's  Taxta?" 

Pansy  answered  the  latter  question.  "I  reckon  she  was 
considerable  put  out  to  hear  a  fine  name  like  Taxta  bein' 
wore  round  promiscurous  by  a  common  Nawthe'n  nigga." 

Zeb  trembled  with  indignation.  "Nigga  I  may  be,  but 
Nawtheren  I  deny." 

"How  come  you  by  that  name  o'  Taxta,  anyhow?" 

"  I  come  by  it  honest.   Wasn't  I  owned  once  by  the  Taxtas  ?" 

Pansy  laughed  him  to  scorn.  "What  Taxtas?  Not  the 
Robert  E.  Taxtas?" 

Zeb  shook  like  an  irascible  tarantula.  "Who  says  I  ain't 
owned  by  the  Robert  E.  Taxtas?  I  come  from  the  best 
Taxtas  they  is — that's  me!" 

Pansy  growled:  "Mebbeso.  Mebbe  so.  They  owned  so 
many  niggas  they  was  room  for  all  kinds." 

Zeb  could  not  resist  the  ironic  repartee,  "Did  they  own 
you?" 

130 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

"  Indeed  and  they  didn't.  I  was  owned  by  betta  folks  than 
the  Taxtas." 

It  was  a  case  of  Arcades  ambo,  and  Zeb  accepted  the  duel. 

"Then  you  must  'a'  been  owned  by  angels;  for  they  newa 
was  betta  folks  than  my  Taxtas." 

"What  abote  the  Beau'gards,  eh?"  Pansy  demanded. 
Zeb  made  a  gesture  of  condescension. 

"Oh,  the  Beau'gards  was  certain'y  the  cream  of  society! 
But  the  Taxtas  was  the  cream  off  the  cream." 

Pansy  retorted,  "Mebbe  so,  but  the  Beau'gards  was  the 
whipped  cream." 

"So  they  was,"  Zeb  lashed  back,  "and  it  was  the  Taxtas 
what  whipped  'em." 

Pansy  gasped. 

Zeb  laughed. 

"Come  on.  I'm  waitin' —  It's  yo' turn  to  speak.  Come 
right  along." 

Pansy  was  mouthing  the  air  like  a  catfish  when  the  door 
bell  rang.  She  said,  weakly: 

"I — I  had  a  good  one,  but  de  do'-bell  knocked  it  out  of, 
ma  haid." 

"  I've  had  a  lot  of  them  kind,  too."  Zeb  grinned  indulgently 
and  gathered  up  the  long  nozle  of  his  machine.  Pansy 
opened  the  door  and  a  bundle  of  letters  was  handed  to  her 
by  the  hall-boy,  with  a  laugh. 

"More  letters,  Pansy." 

Pansy  slammed  the  door  and  threw  the  letters  on  the  desk; 
muttering,  "Mo'  investments!" 

But  Zeb  was  staring  at  her  intently.  He  asked,  "Did  I 
heah  that  man  call  you  Pansy?" 

"I  reckon  you  did;  that's  ma  name." 

She  fell  to  her  knees  and  began  to  scrub  the  floor.  Zeb 
studied  her. 

"Not  Pansy  Beau'gard?" 

"Who  else  d'you  s'pose?" 

She  did  not  look  up  to  see  how  tremendously  this  careless 
remark  affected  him.  He  controlled  himself  with  difficulty 
as  he  murmured: 

"  I  knowed  a  man  who  used  to  be  powerful  sweet  on  a  little 
yella  Pansy  about  yo'  size  and  construction.  His  name  was 
— lemme  see — Zeb.  Dat's  it — Zeb." 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Pansy  stopped  scrubbing,  to  echo  faintly,  "Zeb?" 

"Um — humm!    You  ewa  have  a — a  frien'  name  o'  Zeb?" 

Pansy  scowled,  and  her  brush  began  to  rush  about  om 
inously  as  she  grumbled: 

"Yes.  I  had  one — once.  And  I  wisht  I  had  him  here 
now." 

The  Professor,  smiling  lusciously,  prolonged  the  delicious 
suspense: 

"Does  you?    'Ca'se  why?" 

"So's  I  could  souse  his  thick  haid  in  this  pail,"  Pansy 
snarled,  "and  w'ar  this  mop  out  on  him,  and — and — " 

"More  yit  a-comin'?"  the  Professor  gasped  as  his  smile 
sickened. 

"And  push  him  down  de  elevata-shaf  and  drap  de  elevata 
on  him." 

"Golly!  how  you  mus1  love  dat  man!"  sighed  the  Professor 
as  he  cautiously  moved  the  mop  out  of  her  reach  with  his 
foot.  "Jest  zackly  what  did  Zeb  do  to  make  you  so  con 
fectionery?" 

"He  run  off  and  lef  me  cold — that's  what  he  done." 

"Was  it  long  ago?" 

"I  was  young  and  good-lookin'." 

"As  fur  back  as  that!" 

Pansy  rose  with  the  difficulty  of  many  rheumatisms.  "It 
was  endurance  de  Silver  War  when  Mista  Ginrul  Sherman 
mowed  dat  tumble  swath  through  the  Sothe  and  ole 
Grant  come  smashin'  thoo  Virginia.  Zeb  ran  off  wid  de 
Yankees." 

The  Professor  hesitated  before  he  voiced  his  appeal :  "You 
hadn't  oughta  hold  it  against  him  now.  You  see,  he  was 
on'y  a  young  boy.  The  Yankees  come  by,  an'  they  kep' 
sayin' :  '  You'm  no  slave.  You'm  'lowed  free.  Git  out  and 
be  a  man  and  work  for  yo'se'f .'  He  says,  '  No,  I'm  gwine 
stick  by  Missy  till  Masta  conies  back;  then  mebbe — mebbe.' 
An'  then  the  Yankees  mahch  away,  flags  a-flappin',  drums 
goin'  brrr!  brrr!  brrr!  brrr!  brrr!  and  fifes  whistlin'  and  ewa- 
body  singin': 

"Hooray,  hooray,  we  soun'  de  jubilee, 
Hooray,  hooray,  de  song  dat  makes  men  free, 
Down  wit1  de  traita  and  up  wit'  de  stah — 
Whilst  we  go  mahchin'  thoo  Jawja." 

132 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Perhaps  it  was  the  heavy  tread  of  the  old  man's  feet  as 
the  song  marched  him  along;  at  any  rate,  the  sword  under 
Colonel  Beauregard's  picture  fell  with  a  crash.  The  blade 
ran  from  the  scabbard  and  lay  naked  along  the  floor. 

The  Professor  stared  at  it  in  terror. 

Pansy  cried,  "You  can't  sing  dat  song  where  dat  blade  is !" 

Zeb  stooped  to  pick  it  up,  shivered,  drew  track,  then 
timidly  replaced  the  sword  in  the  sheath  and  laid  it  again 
in  place  with  reverence,  pleading: 

"Rest  easy,  Kunnel.  I  won't  newa  sing  a  Yankee  song 
no  mo'.  Dat's  de  song  led  Zeb  wrong  and  got  him  stranded 
up  Nauth  heah.  They's  one  I  like  betta  abote: 

"I  wisht  I  was  in  de  Ian'  of  cotton, 
'Simmon  seed  and  sandy  bottom. 
Look  away!    Look  away!    Away! 

"See,  he's  smilin'  now." 

He  gazed  up  at  the  portrait,  and  in  his  superstitious  eyes 
the  implacable  mien  seemed  to  express  the  forgiveness  he 
sought. 

Pansy,  shaken  by  the  ready  occultism  of  her  race,  felt  an 
old-time  tenderness  at  her  heart.  She  became  for  the  mo 
ment  once  more  the  crisp  young  wench  that  had  loved  the 
cub  Zeb  had  been.  She  groaned  across  the  wasted  years. 

"Aw,  Zeb,  why  did  you  go?" 

The  Professor  put  out  his  arms  and  gathered  the  old  crone 
in,  and  mumbled: 

"  I  didn't  know  no  betta,  Pansy.  I  tried  and  I  tried  to  git 
back  to  you,  but  seems  like  I  jest  couldn't.  And  I  was 
skeered  to  come  back,  and  I  been  so  lonesome  for  you  I 
nearly  turned  white." 

Pansy  plucked  flirtatiously  at  his  sleeve  and  simpered: 
"Dog-on  you!  You  still  got  them  same  old  bunco  ways." 

Zeb  stayed  back  in  the  past  with  her  and  chortled :  "  Golly, 
when  I  shut  ma  eyes,  I  can  see  you  jes'  as  plain  as  plain. 
You  always  had  de  little  Beau'gard  girl  with  you,  an'  I 
was  bodyguardin'  Masta  Bob  Taxta,  and  we  was  gwine  ter 
marry  them  two  chillen  to  each  otha  when  we  all  growed 
up  so's  you  and  me  would  be  owned  by  de  same  family. 
Did  they  marry  each  other?" 

i33 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Pansy  shook  her  head.  "  Ump-umm !  My  li'l  gal  married 
a  gemman  name  o'  Summalin.  He  daid  now!" 

Zeb  was  lost  again.  He  moaned,  "Then  where  is  us 
Taxtas  at?" 

"Your  Marse  Bob,  he's  daid  long  since,"  Pansy  said. 
Seeing  how  the  old  head  dropped  under  this  blow,  she  spoke 
with  better  cheer: 

"But  he  left  a  young  Masta  Bob,  an'  young  Masta  Bob's 
sweet  on  ma  Miss  April,  and  they're  goin'  to  marry  up  with 
one  anotha  one  of  these  days." 

Zeb  shouted,  his  trust  renewed  in  the  life  that  had  tested 
his  optimism  sorely: 

"Is  they?  Let  it  come  quick!  Oh,  golly!  I's  waited  long 
for  this  day." 

Pansy  could  never  endure  uninterrupted  bliss.  She 
croaked: 

"They's  other  men  hangin'  round  here  mighty  persistent, 
though.  It  makes  me  oneasy." 

"What  men?" 

"A  blue  Yankee  name  o'  Kellogg,  for  one.  And  a  New- 
Yawker  name  Reece.  If  Mista  Bob  ain't  spry,  he'll  lose  Miss 
April." 

Zeb  wafted  the  menace  away.  "I  can't  allow  dat.  I 
pintedly  kinnot  allow  it.  Jest  you  wait  till  I  git  back 
workin'  for  young  Masta  Bob.  I'll  marry  him  to  your  Miss 
April  so  quick  it  '11  make  his  haid  swim." 

Pansy  sniffed  at  such  conceit.  She  said:  "You  betta 
make  that  vacurum  swim.  You  ain't  gittin'  paid  for  bringin' 
on  weddin's,  is  ya?" 

Zeb  laughed  and  set  to  work  at  last.  He  turned  the  juice 
from  the  wire  into  the  coil  and  pushed  the  prow  of  his  ma 
chine  about  the  floor  and  the  rugs  with  a  magic  influence 
that  Pansy  watched  in  stupefaction.  Zeb  noted  her  homage 
and  smiled. 

"Kind  o'  cozy,  us-all  keepin'  house  togetha.  On'y  one 
thing  needed,  and  that's  Masta  Bob.  Bring  him  on,  I  say, 
and  lea'  me  at  him." 

By  and  by,  as  if  to  cover  his  bet,  Fate  brought  on  Bob. 
The  telephone  rang.  Pansy  scrambled  to  her  feet  with  the 
chivalrous  assistance  of  her  ancient  suitor.  She  spoke  into 
the  transmitter.  "Tell  him  would  he  please  come  up." 

134 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Then  she  rounded  on  Zeb,  "Heah  he  is!" 

The  boastful  Professor  turned  the  color  of  old  ashes: 
"Oh,  Lawsy!  I'm  skeered.  I  'ain't  saw  a  real  Taxta  since 
his  father  was  a  little  boy.  Whew!"  He  tried  to  brush  up 
a  little,  rubbed  his  shoes  on  his  calves,  ran  the  vacuum- 
cleaner  about  his  clothes,  and  mopped  his  beaded  brow, 
stammering: 

"I  gotta  be  spick  and  span,  and  span  and  spick.  I'm 
goin'  to  open  de  do'  on  him,  and  I'll  say,  'Young  Masta 
Bob,  gimme  a  job.'  See!  Dat  makes  a  song!  'Young  Masta 
Bob,  gimme  a  nice  job.'  No,  'job's'  betta — plain  'job'!" 

The  bell  rang.  Zeb  was  palsied.  He  chattered:  "It's 
goin' to  be  him.  It's  him  at  de  do' !  Oh,  Lordy!! —  What's 
ma  speech?  'Young  Masta  Bob,  gimme  a  position' — no, 
dat  ain't  it.  'Oh,  Masta  Bob,  please  gimme — '  Oh,  golly!  I 
done  been  and  gone  and  forgit  my  oration.  You,  you  let 
him  in." 

But  Pansy  shook  her  head  and  pointed  relentlessly:   "Go 
awn!     Don't  keep  him  standin'  outside!     Go  awn,  you  ol* 
fool!" 
10 


CHAPTER  X 

WITH  a  mighty  effort  Zeb  pulled  his  feet  out  of  im 
aginary  asphalt,  crossed  the  room,  swung  the  door 
wide,  and  gaped  at  Bob,  who  walked  in  and  automatically 
put  out  his  hat  and  stick.  The  staring  Zeb  groped  for  them, 
missed,  and  let  them  fall,  then  scrambled  for  them,  tripping 
on  the  stick  and  kicking  the  hat  across  the  floor.  He  went 
after  it  like  a  huge  spider,  and  Bob  wondered  aloud: 

"What's  all  that,  Pansy?" 

Pansy  was  too  kind,  or  too  cruel,  to  seize  the  opportunity. 
She  prompted  Zeb: 

"Speak  up,  man!    Speak  up!" 

The  Professor  faltered  idiotically:  "I'm  de —  I'm  de 
man  what  cleans  de  vacurums." 

Bob  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  smiled  at  Pansy.  "I 
reckon  he's  been  cleaning  out  a  bottle  or  two,  eh,  Pansy?" 

He  crossed  the  room  to  the  statue  of  him  that  April  had 
been  making.  But  he  saw  that  since  they  had  last  quarreled 
over  it  she  had  evidently  wreaked  her  well-known  temper 
on  it.  This  gave  him  so  much  to  think  of  that  he  paid  no 
heed  to  the  whispering  of  the  befuddled  old  Professor,  whom 
Pansy  was  berating: 

"You're  what's  gwine  to  make  young  Masta  Bob  marry 
Miss  April !  You  can't  even  take  yo'  own  foot  out  yo'  mouf ." 

Zeb  explained:  "Fo'  Gawd,  I  thought  he  was  the  livin' 
ha'nt  of  his  grandpappy.  But  he  didn't  reco'nize  me,  did  he?" 

"Oh,  he  reco'nize  you  all  right.  He  say  you  been  cleanin' 
out  a  bottle." 

"Now  ain't  dat  pitiful!"  the  Professor  moaned.  "To  git 
de  name  widout  de  game."  He  stared  at  Bob's  back  with 
awe  till  Bob,  turning  away  in  perplexity  from  the  statuette, 
caught  his  foot  in  the  vacuum-hose.  Then  Zeb  darted  for 
ward,  knelt,  and  lifted  Bob's  foot  from  danger,  mumbling: 

"'Scuse  me,  Masta  Bob!" 

136 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

Bob  stared  down  at  the  poll  of  gray  moss.  "Why  do  you 
call  me  that?" 

The  Professor  grinned  up.  "You  don't  remember  roe, 
does  ya?" 

"No.    Where  did  I  ever  see  you  before?" 

"You  newa  did.  I  reckon  that's  why  you  don't  rememba 
me.  Yo'  pappy  seen  me,  though,  when  he  was  abote  knee- 
high  to  a  grasshoppa." 

Bob  was  used  to  being  claimed  by  old  negroes.  He  liked 
to  be.  He  smiled.  "Yes?" 

"Yassa.  Yo'  father  used  to  belong  to  me — to  take  keer 
of.  I  belonged  to  yo'  pappy 's  pappy." 

"Oh,  you  did!    Aren't  you  pretty  far  north?" 

"Yassa,  but  I'm  goin'  back  now." 

"That's  good.    When?" 

"Whenewa  you's  raidy  to  move.  You's  de  gemman 
what's  goin'  to  take  me  back." 

Bob  laughed.  "Oh,  am  I?  But  I  have  nothing  for  you 
to  do." 

"  Then  you  gotta  git  something." 

"What  would  you  suggest?" 

"Well,  you  betta  lea'  me  take  care  of  you." 

The  old  turtle  volunteered  to  look  after  the  young  hawk. 
The  hawk  was  rather  pleased  by  the  compliment.  He  helped 
Zeb  to  his  feet  and  asked: 

"Have  you  ever  been  a  valet?" 

"I  been  about  ewathing  that's  to  be  beed.  I've  vakted 
some  of  the  best  folks  they  is — outside  us  Taxtas." 

"All  right,  some  day." 

"Some  day  is  no  day." 

"Well,  if  you  lose  your  present  job,  come  around." 

With  a  doglike  familiarity  Zeb  circled  the  table,  and  con 
fronted  Bob  again: 

"Fs  done  lose  de  job  now,  and  I's  come  round." 

Bob  laughed  and  cuffed  him  on  the  shoulder.  "You  good- 
for-nothing  black  hound!" 

"Dat's  de  talk,  dat's  de  talk!"  Zeb  shouted.  "My  years 
is  jest  achin1  for  dem  kin'  words.  Call  me  some  mo'." 

Young  Masta  Taxter  was  somewhat  embarrassed  by  his 
treasure-trove,  but  he  was  game.  He  looked  Zeb  over. 

"You're  a  sight,  aren't  you?*' 

137 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"I  don't  do  us  Taxtas  very  proud." 

Bob  took  out  a  vast  amount  of  money  and  peeled  off  a 
fifty-dollar  bill  with  the  fresh  pride  of  a  new-rich. 
You  go  buy  yourself  some  new  clothes." 

The  paper  seemed  to  burn  the  old  man's  palms.  He  gasped : 
"L*wsy,  some  folks  must  be  settin'  up  nights  writin'  money. 
Ill  «rtainly  buy  me  a  trousseau." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  came  down  the  stairs  at  this  moment 
with  &  cordial,  "Hello,  Bob!  April  will  be  right  down." 
She  noted  Zeb  and  the  state  of  the  room. 

"Gre't  Heavens!  haven't  you  finished  here  yet?" 

"  No'm.    I  been  interrupted,  and  I'm  afraid  I  can't  go  on." 

Mrs.  Summerlin's  eyes  popped  with  anger.  Zeb  hastened 
to  esplain:  "You  see,  Missy,  I  belong  to  Masta  Bob  now. 
Ma  tune  ain't  ma  own." 

Bob  confirmed  this  with  a  nod,  and  Mrs.  Summerlin  ap 
pealed  to  him.  "  Mayn't  he  finish  here  first,  Bob?" 

"Of  course!    Go  on,  you  lazy  pup." 

The  Professor  bowed  low.  "  I  was  on'y  waitin'  for  orders 
from  de  haid  of  de  house." 

He  set  his  machine  to  purring  in  haste,  but  Mrs.  Summerlin 
checked  him:  "You've  wasted  the  whole  morning.  You'll 
hare  to  work  up-stairs  now,  till  the  people  go." 

' '  Up-stairs  ?    Yassum !" 

While  he  gathered  his  equipment  April  came  down  the 
stairs,  a  martyred  queen  in  manner,  but  a  fashion-queen 
in  costume.  Bob  forgot  Zeb  and  all  other  minor  matters 
in  his  anxious  scrutiny  of  that  important  face.  He  did  not 
even  notice  her  new  gown,  or  the  epoch-marking  fact  that 
she  was  no  longer  in  blouse  and  breeches,  but  in  a  cubist 
delirium  of  colored  silks  defying  old  standards  of  combi 
nation. 


CHAPTER  XI 

A'RIL  had  hardly  expected  Bob  to  understand  the  sig 
nificance  of  her  revolutionary  frock.  That  was  for  the 
confusion  of  the  other  woman.  But  April  had  supposed  that 
Bob  would  notice  that  silk  stockings  had  replaced  her  leathern 
greaves  and  that  her  ankles  and  knees  had  disappeared  from 
the  public  view. 

In  fair  exchange  the  throat  and  shoulder  and  tarns, 
formerly  lost  in  a  military  collar  and  coat,  were  now  dis 
played  under  a  faint  haze  of  tinted  chiffon.  The  very  rib 
bons  and  fabric  of  her  nether  garb,  indeed,  were  dimly  mani 
fest.  In  accordance  with  the  habit  of  the  period,  April  was 
extremely  de'collete'e  all  around  except  for  that  almost  im 
aginary  veil  which,  by  a  gentleman's  and  lady's  agreement, 
was  accepted  as  representing  the  modest  concealment  that 
no  respectable  woman  will  lay  aside  before  six  o'clock  in 
the  evening. 

Bob  any  tava  ignored  the  dressmaker's  genius,  but  he 
noted  the  rosy  hue  and  April's  beauty,  and  he  paid  tribute 
handsomely. 

"Good  Lord,  but  you  are  beautiful,  April  I" 

"Praise  from  an  expert — " 

"Now,  honey!"  her  mother  interposed.  "You  bthare. 
You're  always  pickin*  on  po'  Bob.  No  wonda  he  nerva 
comes  raound  any  mo'!" 

,  'I've  been  terribly  busy,"  Bob  explained. 
'Ha!"   April  laughed. 
'Well,  I  have  been." 

'  I  know  you  have.    I've  seen  herl" 

'We're  off  again!"  said  Bob,  turning  to  Mrs.  Summerlin 
for  protection. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  uneasy,  but  she  was  curious  to  know 
— cak,  as  F.  P.  A.  puts  it. 

"Tell  us  about  her,  Bob,  before  she  gets  here,  won't  you? 
Is  she  a  Southern  lady?" 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Very,"  said  Bob.  "She's  from  Texas.  But  it's  her 
brother  that  I'm  dealing  with,  not  her." 

Professor  Taxter,  climbing  the  stairs  slowly,  had  studied 
April  with  entire  approval  and  had  accepted  her  as  his 
future  mistress.  He  had  been  warned  by  Pansy  that  April 
had  other  suitors;  now  he  was  horrified  to  overhear  that 
Bob's  intentions  were  also  held  in  doubt.  He  rolled  big 
eyes  of  anguish  at  Pansy  and  found  equal  alarm  in  hers. 
They  listened  shamelessly  to  what  followed,  peering  over  the 
rail  of  the  balcony  above. 

Bob  was  eager  to  explain  a  perfectly  natural  situation 
perfectly  naturally,  but  his  Adam's  apple  got  in  the  way. 
"You  see,  Mrs.  Summerlin,  I'm  trying  to  find  the  best  place 
to  put  my  money.  It's  only  ten  thousand  dollars." 

"Listen  to  that  boy's  language!"  Zeb  whispered  to  Pansy. 

Bob  went  on:  "  In  a  bank  it  would  bring  me  only  four  per 
cent.  You  can't  do  anything  with  four  hundred  dollars." 

Zeb  chuckled  in  Pansy's  ear,  "I  could  steal  a  lot  of  chick 
ens  for  fo'  hundad  dollas." 

Pansy  motioned  him  to  hush  and  listen  to  Bob,  who  was 
saying:  "I  happened  on  this  Joe  Yarmy,  and — in  fact,  he 
asked  me  for  advice.  He  has  a  property  in  the  heart  of  the 
oil  region,  and  they're  making  such  whopping  fortunes  down 
there  that  I  thought  I  might  go  into  it.  It  seemed  only 
fair  to  let  you  all  know  of  it.  So  I  asked  you  to  see  these 
people.  That's  all." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  said,  "It's  mighty  sweet  of  you,  Bob; 
but,  after  all,  what  do  you  know  about  oil?" 

"Not  much;  that's  why  I'm  going  down  to  find  out." 

April  lifted  her  pensive  head.    "You're  going  to  Texas?" 

"I  thought  I  would." 

"With  her?" 

"With  him!"  Bob  stared  at  April  a  moment,  and  a  flash 
of  wisdom  penetrated  his  gloom.  He  startled  her  by  saying, 
"  Do  you  love  me  as  much  as  all  that?" 

"As  all  what?" 

"As  to  be  jealous  of  the  sister  of  the  man  I'm  going  into 
business  with." 

"But  whenever  I  see  you,  you  seem  to  see  nothing  but 
her.  Twice  you  didn't  know  I  was  on  earth." 

"Twice?" 

140 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

"Yes,  I  saw  you  at  the  Commodore,  making  googoo  eyes 
at  the  cat;  and  in  the  Park.  You've  forgotten  even  what  I 
look  like." 

"You  look  like  what  I  want  to  marry." 

"Bob!    Have  mercy  on  poor  mother!" 

" I  won't  propose  again  till  I'm  a  rich  man.  That  hundred- 
thousand  legacy  of  your  mother's  and  that  twenty-five  thou 
sand  of  your  own  make  me  look  like  such  a  piker  I'm  ashamed 
to  come  around  at  all." 

The  word  "piker"  reminded  April  of  a  word  Jimmy  Dry- 
den  had  used  of  Bob.  She  broke  in  with  a  feminine  short  cut. 

"By  the  way,  Bob,  what  is  a  gimper?" 

"Oh,  that's  just  aviation  slang  we  used  in  France." 

April  was  still  uneasy  about  that  mysterious  womanful 
France.  "But  what  does  a  gimper  do  when  he  gimps?" 

Bob's  explanation  was  a  surprise  and  a  comfort  to  her. 

"Well,  he — he —  Well,  it's  like  this.  Suppose  a  fellow 
goes  up  with  another  plane  and  suddenly  five  Boche  planes 
jump  on  the  two  of  them  from  a  pretty  pink  cloud.  Well, 
of  course,  they  both  light  out  for  home —  Well,  now,  suppose 
the  other  fellow  gets  engine  trouble,  or  his  machine-gun 
jams,  or  anything,  then  what  does  the  other  fellow  do? 
There  are  five  planes  against  two.  He  can  say,  '  It's  better 
for  me  to  get  home  alive  than  for  both  of  us  to  get  smashed,' 
and  wave  good-by  to  the  other  fellow;  or  he  can  say,  'I'll 
hurry  home  and  get  help  and  come  back,'  and  leave  him;  or 
any  little  excuse  like  that.  If  he  does  any  of  these  things 
he  may  be  very  wise,  but  he's  no  gimper." 

"Then  what  does  a  gimper  do?"  April  murmured. 

"Oh,  he  sticks  around  with  his  partner  and  takes  pot- 
luck  with  him.  A  gimper  is  a  fellow  who  would  rather  die 
than  play  the  quitter  when  his  pal's  in  trouble." 

April  was  staring  at  him  through  tears  of  bliss.  Her  sus 
picions  had  been  turned  to  adoration.  Bob,  who  had  no 
idea  of  what  was  in  her  head,  asked,  carelessly : 

"Where  did  you  ever  hear  the  word?" 

"Jimmy  Dryden  used  it.  He  told  me  that  you  were  the 
gimpiest  little  gimper  that  ever  gamp." 

Bob  flushed  with  shame  at  being  accused  of  heroism. 
He  tried  to  dodge  the  burden.  "Oh,  he  was  stringing  you. 
He  just  said  that,  thinking  it  would  please  you." 

141 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"It  does,  Bob!  Oh,  but  it  does!"  April  squealed,  and 
suddenly  flung  her  arms  about  him  and  kissed  him,  crying, 
"Let's  be  engaged  again,  Bob." 

Barkis  was  more  than  willin',  and  Bob  was  just  about  to 
crush  April  to  his  bounding  heart  when  a  loud  shout  of 
triumph  from  Professor  Taxter  made  the  whole  incident 
ludicrous. 

April  fell  back  to  her  chair  in  utter  shame.  Bob's  ecstasy 
was  changed  to  a  longing  to  take  the  old  negro's  life.  He 
shouted : 

"Zeb,  come  here!" 

He  had  to  call  two  or  three  times,  and  then  it  was  Pansy 
who  appeared  at  the  balcony  rail.  She  leaned  out  like  a 
burlesque  Juliet,  and  murmured: 

"Did  anybody  call  me?" 

"I  called  Zeb!"  Bob  roared.  "What  does  he  mean  by 
watching  us?  Send  him  here  till  I  fire  him." 

Pansy  lied  superbly:  "Why,  Mista  Bob!  Zeb's  been  in 
the  spar'-room  up  year  vr.curum-cleanin'." 

"But  I  heard  him  laugh." 

"Oh  yessa.  We  was  talkin'  abote  when  we  was  chillun 
togetha,  an'  he — he  didn'  realize  you-all  could  year  him. 
You  betta  excuse  him,  hadn'  you?" 

Bob  was  sure  that  Pansy  was  improvising,  but  he  had 
no  documents  to  refute  her  fiction  with,  and  he  waved  her 
away.  He  could  not  recapture  April  or  her  fine,  careless 
rapture. 


CHAPTER  XII 

ZEB,  as  the  deus  ex  machina  in  this  family,  began  his  god 
head  by  as  terrible  a  blunder  as  Zeus  committed  when, 
according  to  Lucian,  he  got  drunk  and,  hurling  a  thunderbolt 
at  a  skeptic,  knocked  one  of  his  own  temples  to  pieces. 

April,  disgusted  by  the  uncouth  guffaw  from  overhead, 
felt  all  her  tender  impulses  turn  sour.  She  said: 

"We'd  better  stick  to  business  talk,  Bob.  I'll  promise  not 
to  attack  you  again  without  warning." 

"Oh,  April!"  was  all  Bob  could  gasp. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  said:  "I  hope  you'll  at  least  give  me 
warning.  But  these  friends  of  Bob's  are  coming.  We  must 
hurry.  Tell  us  all  you  can,  Bob." 

Bob  stumbled  ahead:  "I  want  you  to  give  the  Yarmys 
the  once-over  and  listen  to  their  proposition.  That's  all." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  polite.  "We'll  be  very  glad  to  talk 
to  them." 

April  was  April.  "  I  may  as  well  tell  you  this,  Bob,  in  ad 
vance:  any  business  proposition  that  involves  your  going 
to  Texas  with  such  a  pretty  girl  as  that  gets  my  no-thank- 
you  right  at  the  start." 

"But  surely,  April,  you're  not  going  to  let  jealousy  ruin 
your  life?" 

"I'm  going  to  let  jealousy  do  its  best  to  save  it,"  was 
April's  blood-curdling  answer. 

Bob  protested.  "But,  April  honey,  a  man  can't  run  his 
business  by  jealousy." 

"A  woman  had  better  run  hers  by  it." 

"Good  Lord!  I  suppose  if  we  got  married  you  wouldn't 
even  let  me  keep  a  good-looking  stenographer  in  my  office." 

"I  should  say  not!" 

Bob  mopped  his  brow  and  gnashed  his  teeth.  Then  he 
took  the  bit  in  them  and  bolted.  He  began  with  a  none 
too  original  whinny: 

"A  woman's  place  is  the  home." 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Let  the  good-looking  stenographers  remember  that. 
Miss  Yarmy's  home  is  in  Texas,  I  believe." 

"I  don't  want  to  be  rude,  April,  but — " 

"A  man  always  says  that  when  he  is  about  to  biff  a  lady 
in  the  eye." 

"  Take  it  as  you  please,  old  girl.  I'm  going  to  run  my  own 
business  my  own  way." 

"By  all  means." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  wrung  her  hands.  "Children!  Children! 
Don't  mind  April,  Bob.  But  tell  me,  where  is  all  this  oil?" 

"In  Texas,  in  Burkburnett  County,  at  a  place  called 
Gypsum.  Have  you  got  a  map?" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  found  an  old  atlas,  and  it  contained  a 
portrait  of  Texas;  and  there,  sure  enough,  was  the  town. 
Mrs.  Summerlin  was  greatly  impressed. 

"Look,  April,  there  it  is!" 

April  was  intolerable.    "Well,  what  does  that  prove?" 

"Oh,  of  course,  if  you  don't  believe  the  map !"  Bob  groaned. 
' '  What's  the  use  of  talking  ?  You  wait  till  you  see  Joe  Yarmy 
and  see  how  honest  he  is." 

"I'm  more  interested  in  seeing  how  honest  she  is." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  shook  her  head,  indicating  that  Bob 
was  not  to  notice  her.  She  said : 

"We  ought  to  invite  your  friends  to  luncheon,  but — '' 

"No,  no!  I  couldn't  stop,  anyway,"  Bob  said.  "My 
mother  gets  into  town  at  one-six,  and  I've  got  to  meet  her." 

" Oh,  isn't  that  splendid!    I'll  be  so  glad  to  see  her  again." 

Bob  had  a  sudden  inspiration.  "She  has  a  little  money 
lying  idle,  too." 

Up-stairs,  Zeb,  listening  with  all  his  ears,  whispered  to 
Pansy : 

"Look's  like  a  lot  of  idle  money's  goin'  to  git  mighty 
busy  round  year.  Jest  as  I  find  my  young  man,  he  ups  and 
lights  out  for  Texas.  I  don't  like  them  Yarmys  the  littlest 
bit.  I  don't  believe  I'm  gwine  to  have  'em,  at  all." 

The  telephone  rang.  Mrs.  Summerlin  was  heard  saying: 
"Send  them  right  up."  Pansy  slumped  down  the  stairs  to 
admit  the  callers.  They  were  Joe  and  Kate.  Zeb  stooped 
down  on  all-fours  and  peered  through  the  spindles  of  the 
balcony  for  a  sight  of  them. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  Virginian  in  her  hospitality.  April 

144 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

was  polite.  Bob  was  effusive,  but  completely  uncomfortable 
with  the  tension  of  rivalry  instantly  established  between 
April  and  Kate.  He  felt  like  a  shy  Circassian  on  the  auction- 
block  being  bid  for  by  two  slave-dealers  ready  to  cut  each 
other's  throats. 

Kate  was  conciliatory  in  her  manner,  and  frankly  admired 
the  home. 

"Some  diggin's,  as  we'd  say  down  in  Texas!  Isn't  it 
interesting,  Joe?" 

"Swell!"  said  Joe,  eying  the  balcony.  "Looks  like  it  was 
built  by  a  porch-climber,  so's  he  could  practise  indoors 
without  attractin'  attention!" 

"Joe,  behave!"  Kate  cried. 

But  Joe  was  frankly  curious.  He  heard  a  faint  purring 
sound: 

"Somebody  running  a  sewin'-machine  up-stairs?" 

"That's  a  vacuum-cleaner  at  work,"  Mrs.  Summerlin 
explained.  "  If  it  annoys  you — " 

Joe  waved  his  hand  indulgently.    "It's  erysipelas  to  me." 

Bob  broke  in:  "I  was  just  telling  about  your  oil  proposi 
tion.  Mrs.  Summerlin  and  Miss  Summerlin  are  a  little 
doubtful." 

"That's  what  I  like  to  see,"  Joe  said.  "Folks  that  don't 
invest  their  money  careful  got  no  right  to  keep  it."  He 
turned  to  Mrs.  Summerlin.  "The  lootenant  here  says  you 
got  some  idle  money." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  modest.  "Well,  we  haven't  much — 
only  a  hundred  thousand  or  so." 

"That  listens  mighty  grand  to  me,"  said  Joe.  "After 
working  for  Uncle  Sam  for  about  a  year  at  thirty  dollas 
a  month,  a  hund'ed  thousand  dollas  looks  as  big  as  the 
moon.  If  we  had  that  much  in  Texas,  we  wouldn't  speak 
to  nobody.  We'd  make  it  half  a  million  in  no  time." 

April  spoke  up,  "Texas  is  pretty  far  away." 

Joe  nodded  and  grinned.  "Hit's  a  long  ways  off,  but  we 
got  to  dig  the  oil  where  she  lays,  ain't  we  ?  You  can't  expect 
it  to  come  up  to  New  York  and  spout  out  of  Central  Park, 
can  you?" 

"No,"  said  April.  "But  I  don't  think  we  could  get  down 
to  Texas.  I  don't  believe  mother  is  quite  equal  to  the  trip. 
I  know  I'm  not." 

US 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Kate  was  charming  about  this.  "It's  a  dreadful  journey. 
Why  should  you  take  it?" 

April  laughed  uncomfortably.  "It's  a  long  distance  to 
send  our  money  by  itself." 

"Oh,  it  would  be  perfectly  safe  with  us,"  Joe  said. 

"No  doubt,"  April  smiled.  "But  we're  just  a  couple  of 
foolish,  timid  women  and — " 

"  I  understand  perfectly,"  Kate  said,  amiably.  "  I  wouldn't 
go  in  if  I  were  you." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  did  not  like  this.  To  have  the  door 
closed  in  her  face  was  irritating.  The  universal  tendency 
is  to  try  the  knob  and  pound,  "Still,  if  Bob  were  there  to 
watch  it,  it  would  be  safe." 

Kate  poured  her  beautiful  gaze  on  Bob.  "  Oh  yes,  indeed." 

April  winced  at  this  and  said,  with  some  acidity,  "May  I 
ask  one  or  two  foolish  questions?" 

' '  Sure !"  said  Joe.  "  Go  on  and  be  as  foolish  as  you  want  to. ' ' 

"  I'm  only  a  woman,  and  I  know  nothing  of  business,  but 
— well,  it  seems  to  me,  if  I  had  as  valuable  a  property  as 
yours,  I'd  want  to  keep  it." 

"Oh,  my  dear,  we  do!"  Kate  exclaimed. 

April  murmured,  with  fermented  syrup,  "  I  got  the  impres 
sion  that  you  were  trying  to  sell  it." 

Kate  felt  the  acid  and  blanched  a  little,  but  controlled 
herself.  "Only  part  of  it." 

April  was  relentlessly  sweet.  "  I'd  be  awfully  selfish  and 
keep  it  all.  I'd  be  down  in  Texas  boring  for  oil  instead  of 
up  here,  selling  an  interest." 

Kate  could  not  trust  herself  to  fight  with  such  light 
foils.  She  said,  "Oh,  but —  You  explain  it,  Joe." 

"Well,  you  see,"  Joe  began,  "a  new  field  needs  a  lot  of 
capital  to  expand  it,  and — well,  as  I  explained  to  Bob,  we're 
kind  of  short  on  cash." 

"I  see,"  said  April.  "Do  the  people  down  there  in  Texas 
think  you  have  a  good  thing?" 

"Oh,  my  dear,"  Kate  exclaimed,  "it's  the  talk  of  the 
county!  That's  all,  the  talk  of  all  Burkburnett." 

"And  they're  all  getting  rich,  I  suppose?" 

"Rich?    Why,  poor  trash  is  buying  automobiles." 

"No  lack  of  money?" 

"I  should  say  not!" 

146 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

April  purled  along.  "Then  I  should  think —  Of  course, 
I'm  only  a  woman — but  if  it  were  my  property,  I'd  look  for 
money  right  around  there  where  people  knew  the  field  and 
would  just  grab  at  the  chance." 

This  was  so  brutally  sarcastic  and  insulting  in  its  impli 
cations  that  Kate  turned  white,  then  red,  and  Bob  felt 
called  upon  to  spring  to  her  defense  even  against  April. 

While  he  groped  for  a  rebuke  that  would  put  her  in  her 
place  Mrs.  Summerlin  said: 

"My  daughter  doesn't  mean  to  question  your  motives. 
She's  just  trying  to  be  business-like." 

Joe's  temper  was  plunging  at  the  leash,  but  he  managed 
to  growl:  "Oh,  that's  all  right.  I  don't  blame  the  lady. 
It  does  look  kind  of  funny,  only,  as  the  lootenant  knows, 
Kate,  ma  sista,  came  up  Nawth  to  meet  me  when  I  got  back 
from  France,  and  I  just  asked  the  lootenant  his  advice,  and 
it  was  his  idea  puttin'  his  own  money  in.  Am  I  right, 
Lootenant?" 

"Absolutely,"  said  Bob. 

Joe  went  on:  "But,  as  the  lady  says,  if  it's  any  good,  the 
Texas  people  would  be  glad  to  go  in  on  it,  and  that's  one 
thing  I  came  up  here  to  say.  That  Texas  friend  of  mine 
I  was  tellin'  the  lootenant  abote  is  pesterin'  the  life  out  of 
me.  He's  got  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  cash  in  his  hand, 
and  he'll  lay  it  right  in  mine  for  a  half-interest.  Of  co'se, 
if  you  ladies  wanted  to  go  in  on  it,  you  got  mo'  money  than 
what  he  has,  and  I  promised  Bob  I'd  give  you  a  show. 
But — I  reckon  you  ain't  int'rested." 

"  I'm  immensely  interested,"  said  April,  with  such  a  dulcet 
venom  in  her  tone  that  Bob  writhed.  But  he  could  not 
check  her  with  his  glare.  She  went  on,  "You  wouldn't  be 
offended  if  we  asked  for  references,  would  you?" 

"References?"  said  Joe.  "I  ain't  lookin'  for  a  job.  You 
know,  I've — " 

"I  mean  bank  references  and  things,"  said  April.  "I 
don't  know  much  about  it,  but  I  think  I've  heard  that  it's 
usual  Is  there  anybody  we  could  telegraph  to?" 

"Lots  of  folks  you  could  telegraph  to,  but — well,  you 
know  what  the  telegraph  service  is  like  now.  It  would  take 
a  heap  of  time." 

"You  would  wait,  wouldn't  you?" 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"I  would,  but  ma  friend  from  Texas  wouldn't.  Fact  is, 
I  promised  him  an  answer  in  half  an  hour." 

Bob  protested  hotly,  "How  can  you  promise  my  option?" 

"Oh,  I  reckon  you  don't  really  want  it,  seeing  that  this 
lady  has  cold  feet  on  the  proposition." 

"I'm  walking  on  my  own  feet,"  said  Bob.  "I've  only  got 
five  thousand  dollars  here,  but — " 

April  leaped  up  and  put  her  hand  on  his  hand  as  it  went 
toward  his  inside  pocket.  The  gesture  and  the  anxiety 
mollified  Bob's  anger  a  little,  but  did  not  weaken  his  reso 
lution. 

• 

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• 

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i 

'I  il/iirfj 


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. 

I 
CHAPTER  Xin 

MRS.  SUMMERLIN  also  felt  the  charm  of  a  vanishing 
opportunity.    There  is  something  irresistible  about  a 
hook  trolled  rapidly  along  the  water.    She  said : 

"Couldn't  you  wait  till  I  go  down  to  my  bank  and — " 

Joe  looked  at  his  watch  and  said,  "How  far  is  your  bank?" 

Before  Mrs.  Summerlin  could  answer,  April  said,  with  all 
the  firmness  of  an  American  daughter : 

"Mother,  I  want  a  word  with  you  and  Bob."  She  turned 
to  the  Yarmys,  "You'll  forgive  us  a  moment?" 

"Certainly!"  said  Kate,  with  a  hurt  smile. 

April  led  the  way  into  a  little  room  used  as  a  library. 
The  Yarmys  wandered  about  the  studio,  Kate  pausing  before 
April's  somewhat  mangled  statuette  and  studying  it  with  a 
curious  interest,  trying  to  make  out  the  artist  in  the  art. 

Up-stairs,  Zeb  and  Pansy  were  holding  an  anxious  parley. 
Zeb  was  whispering: 

"Golly!  I  hope  Masta  Bob  ain't  goin'  to  feed  all  that 
beautiful  money  to  them  two  sea-lions.  I  tell  you,  I  do  not 
desiah  to  go  to  no  Texas." 

"Git  on  with  your  vacuration  and  I'll  git  to  mine," 
said  Pansy,  and  left  him.  Zeb  set  to  work  glumly. 

In  the  library  April,  her  mother,  and  Bob  were  all  wan  with 
the  tense  strain  on  their  every  emotion.  And  nothing  puts 
such  strain  on  emotion  as  a  wrangle  over  money. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  spoke  first:  "April,  I  don't  know  what's 
got  into  you.  Your  manners  amaze  me.  Why  couldn't 
you  at  least  be  polite  to  Bob's  friends?  I'm  going  to  put 
some  of  my  money  in  this  deal  just  to  show  you  that  you 
can't  boss  everybody." 

'But,  mother,  I  don't  like  all  this  hurry.     Suppose  you 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

let  you  risk  your  money.  If  you  lost  it,  I'd  never  forgive 
myself.  I'll  just  stake  you  to  a  little  flier  of  five  hundred 
off  my  own  pile.  If  it  wins,  you  get  what  it  makes;  if  it 
doesn't,  you  won't  know  the  difference." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  shook  her  head.  "That's  right  sweet  of 
you,  Bob,  but  we  couldn't  accept  that,  could  we,  April?" 

"Of  course  not.  They  sha'n't  have  any  of  our  money, 
and  I  beg  you  not  to  let  them  lay  their  hands  on  any  of 
yours." 

Bob  was  aghast.  "Why,  you  speak  as  if  you  thou^nt  they 
were  a  pair  of  crooks." 

"I  do!" 

Even  Mrs.  Summerlin  gasped  at  that.  "April  you'd  betta 
see  a  docta." 

"Well,  Bob  had  better  see  one,  too." 

"What  on  earth  have  you  against  them?"  Bob  pleaded, 
more  for  April's  sake  than  Kate's. 

"Nothing  at  all,  except  that  I  think  the  man's  a  crook 
and  the  woman  is  a  thief." 

Bob  dashed  his  hand  through  his  hair  as  if  to  press  his 
skull  together  before  it  exploded.  He  sighed,  "Well,  if  your 
jealousy  is  going  to  carry  you  to  such  insane  lengths  as  that 
I'll  have  to  fly  by  myself."  Bob  started  back  toward  the 
studio. 

"I'm  trying  to  be  a  gimper  to  you,  Bob,"  April  sighed. 

There  was  something  in  her  voice  that  reached  into  Bob's 
heart  like  a  seizing  hand  and  wrung  it.  He  moved  on  into 
the  presence  of  the  Yarmys,  but  his  resolution  of  indepen 
dence  was  wavering. 

April  and  her  mother  followed  him,  and  the  Yarmys 
looked  at  him  wonderingly.  There  was  a  long  silence  till 
Joe  said: 

"Well,  brotha?" 

"I  hardly  know  what  to  do,"  Bob  faltered. 

Kate  spoke  impulsively.  "By  all  means  do  as  Miss  Sum- 
merlin  wants  you  to." 

If  Kate  had  said,  "  Please  don't  listen  to  Miss  Summerlin," 
Bob  would  have  resisted  that  advice.  He  was  in  a  mood 
to  resist  any  advice,  because  advice  was  interference  with 
his  freedom  of  will.  He  shook  with  anger. 

"No!    A  man  has  got  to  act  on  his  own  business  in- 

150 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

stinct.    I'll  go  to  Texas  with  you  and  look  into  the  matter 
there." 

Joe  hesitated.  "But  I  got  to  have  some  cash,  brotha. 
That  friend  of  mine  is  waiting." 

Bob  drew  out  his  pocketbook  and  took  from  it  the  five 
thousand-dollar  bills.  He  gazed  at  them  with  a  parental 
affection.  To  make  them  look  more  important,  he  spread 
them  out  on  a  large  table.  He  said  with  a  majestic  meekness : 

"Mr.  Yarmy,  here's  half  of  all  the  money  I  have  on  earth. 
What  will  you  give  me  for  it?" 

Joe  pondered  a  moment.  "I'll  give  you  a  third  interest 
in  all  we  make  out  of  our  propaty.  We'll  share  and  share 
alike,  I  and  you  and  Kate." 

Bob  waved  his  hand  toward  it  to  indicate  that  it  was 
Joe's,  but  April  gave  a  little  cry: 

"Bob,  I  implore  you." 

Bob  drew  himself  to  his  full  height  and  spoke  with  lofty 
courtesy : 

"April,  I  don't  want  to  be  ugly,  but  I  must  ask  to  be 
allowed  to  run  my  own  business  affairs.  Mr.  Yarmy — " 

April  drew  herself  up  to  her  full  height  and  advanced 
to  the  table,  wrenching  from  her  finger  a  little  circlet  of  gold 
holding  a  smallish  diamond.  It  had  not  left  her  hand  since 
the  last  serious  quarrel  with  Bob  before  he  went  to  France. 
She  spoke  in  a  pathetically  furious  mimicry  of  Bob's  manner: 

"Perhaps  you  can  buy  a  little  more  oil  with  this." 
11 


CHAPTER  XIV 

'"PHE  diamond  glistened  like  a  tear,  and  Bob  could  not 
1  resist  its  magic.    He  picked  it  up  and  turned  to  April. 

"Oh,  but,  honey,  if  you  feel  as  strong  as  that — " 

Joe  spoke  up  quickly:  "I'll  tell  you.  Just  to  end  the 
ahgament  and  satisfy  ewabody,  let's  flip  a  coin  for  it. 
Who's  got  half  a  dolla?  I  got  one." 

He  took  a  coin  from  his  waistcoat  pocket  and  poised  it 
on  his  thumb.  "Heads  or  tails?" 

"Which  means  what?"  said  Bob. 

"Heads,  you  come  in  with  us;  tails,  you  take  yo'  lady 
friend's  advice." 

An  appeal  to  the  sporting  instinct  overrides  all  other  con 
siderations,  and  Bob  was  full  of  sporting  instinct.  He  said: 

"You  can't  ask  fairer  than  that,  can  you,  April?" 

April  murmured,  "I  don't  ask  anything  at  all." 

Bob  frowned  and  said,  "Go  ahead,  Mr.  Yarmy." 

"Are  you  ready?"  Joe  inquired,  with  zest. 

All  eyes  were  on  him,  especially  the  ivory  eyes  of  Zeb, 
who  hung  over  the  rail  above,  staring  down  at  the  row  of 
bills  and  at  the  coin  on  Joe  Yarmy's  thumb-nail.  Pansy 
was  polishing  April's  silver  in  April's  room.  She  missed 
the  epic  moment. 

Joe  sang  out,  with  a  race-track  twang:  "Are  you  all  set? 
Heads,  you  buy;  tails,  you  back  out." 

He  snapped  the  coin  into  the  air.  He  was  so  excited  that 
as  it  descended  twirling  toward  the  back  of  his  outstretched 
left  hand,  where  he  planned  to  catch  it,  he  misjudged.  The 
coin  hit  his  wrist,  bounced  aside,  struck  the  floor  on  its  edge, 
ran  like  a  fleet  little  wheel  straight  for  the  divan,  and  van 
ished  beneath  it. 

The  two  men  and  the  three  women,  in  a  frenzy  of  suspense 
as  to  the  verdict  of  fate,  scurried  in  pursuit.  Bob  dropped 
to  one  knee.  Joe  went  down  on  all-fours,  and  the  three 

152 


MONEY  GOES  OUT 

squaws  began  to  tug  at  the  divan.  It  was  of  heavy  carved 
wood,  and  it  was  hard  to  budge. 

When  at  last  the  divan  was  shoved  far  to  one  side  Joe 
sat  up  on  his  haunches  and  pointed  to  the  half-dollar  where 
it  lay  staring  like  one  evil  eye. 

"Heads!"  the  others  mumbled. 

"There's  the  answer,"  said  Joe. 

"There's  your  money!"  said  Bob,  jerking  a  thumb  over 
his  shoulder.  He  did  not  think  to  look  at  the  other  side  of 
the  coin. 

Joe  rose,  helped  Bob  up,  and  walked  slowly  toward  the 
table. 

And  when  they  got  there  the  table  was  bare.  All  jaws 
dropped.  Ten  eyes  began  to  roll  wildly  in  their  orbits. 
Five  spines  felt  the  chill  presence  of  something  spooky. 


Book    III 
HONOR    COMES    IN 


CHAPTER  I 

NOW  you  see  it  and  now  you  don't! 
That  is  all  very  well  as  a  watchword  for  a  magician 
or  a  spiritualist,  but  in  every-day  affairs  it  is  neither  amusing 
nor  satisfying.  Five  thousand  real  dollars  in  crisp  thousand- 
dollar  bills  is  no  proper  material  for  hocus-pocus  or  miracle. 
There  was  never  yet  philosopher  could  endure  the  toothache ; 
and  there  was  never  yet  occultist  who  could  accept  a  magic 
by  which  a  substantial  sum  of  his  own  money  was  whisked 
away. 

Or  so,  at  least,  it  was  with  the  dematerializing  of  those 
five  thousand  dollars  that  Bob  Taxter  had  laid  on  the  table 
and  Joe  Yarmy  had  flipped  a  coin  for.  If  a  sleight-of-hand 
man  had  made  them  vanish  in  the  full  light,  everybody  would 
have  laughed  and  said:  "  Mighty  clever  trick.  I  wonder  how 
he  did  it."  If  an  old  lady  had  made  them  disappear  in  a  dark 
cabinet,  nearly  everybody  would  have  gasped  and  sighed: 
"Marvelous!  Trickery  is  impossible.  It  proves  that  there 
are  spirits  and  that  this  old  lady  has  them  working  for  her." 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  and  Professor 
Hyslop  and  others  would  have  filled  the  magazines  and 
books  with  big  words  about  it.  It  would  have  sufficed  to 
disprove  the  law  of  gravity  and  every  other  law. 

But  the  disappearance  of  this  money  was  really  mystifying 
because  it  was  real  money  and  because  none  of  the  wonderers 
had  seen  any  human  being  in  its  neighborhood.  Five  people 
were  in  the  same  room,  but  they  had  all  pursued  the  rolling 
half-dollar,  leaving  the  five  bank-notes  in  repose.  It  is 
excellent  cabinet  logic  that  if  nobody  has  seen  anybody  do 
a  thing,  it  must  have  been  done  by  the  dead.  But  this  was 
money!  not  a  banjo  or  a  tambourine. 

Mrs.  Summerlin's  first  thought  was,  "The  place  is 
haunted."  April  Summerlin's  first  thought  was :  "Was  that 
Yarmy  woman  really  over  there  with  me?  She's  capable  of 
anything!" 

157 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

But  even  April's  hostility  could  not  mistake  the  sincerity 
in  Kate  Yarmy's  horrified  eyes.  Bob  Taxter,  whose  money 
it  was,  was  simply  chloroformed  by  the  shock  of  the  loss. 
He  could  not  think  at  all,  even  occultly. 

Joe  Yarmy,  however,  always  suspected  everybody  in 
advance,  and  would  keep  his  eye  on  St.  Peter  and  drop  a 
little  acid  on  the  golden  stairs  of  the  New  Jerusalem.  Joe 
Yarmy,  who  did  not  even  trust  himself,  wasted  no  time  on 
mystic  speculations.  The  one  important  fact  was  that  he 
had  won  the  money  on  the  toss  of  a  coin,  and  that  while  he 
chased  the  coin  the  paper  fled.  The  situation  bored  him 
insufferably. 

Bob  Taxter  pressed  his  brow  and  stared  at  the  place  where 
the  money  had  been  and  whispered: 

"It's  gone!    My  five  thousand  dollars!    Just  vanished!" 

Joe  Yarmy  rolled  a  fish-eye  at  him  and  sneered:  "Your 
five  thousand?  Where  d'  you  get  that  'your'  stuff?  It's 
my  five  thousand,  and  I  want  it." 

Bob  spoke  vaguely,  "Find  it,  and  you  can  keep  it." 

Joe  snarled.  "Agh!  Cut  it  out  and  come  across !  I  ain't 
time  for  any  handy-spandy  jacky-dandy  business." 

Bob  gasped,  "You  don't  think  I  have  it,  do  you?" 

"Well,  somebody's  got  it !  It  was  there,  and  it  ain't  there. 
What  you  tryin'  to  put  over?  You  tryin'  to  welsh  on  me?" 

A  flame  of  wrath  blazed  in  Bob's  eyes;  he  seized  Joe  by 
the  shoulder  with  one  hand  and  held  his  fist  at  the  ready, 
as  he  muttered : 

"Do  you  think  I've  got  it?" 

Joe  preferred  his  face  and  health  to  his  argument.  He 
weakened  and  gulped  and  whined :  "  You  couldn't  have  took 
it.  You  was  on  your  knees  with  me  ova  yonda,  brotha!" 

Bob  let  him  go  and  sighed:  "It's  my  loss.  I  don't  get 
either  the  oil-property  or  the  money  now." 

"The  oil-prope'ty  is  ready  when  the  money  is,"  Joe  re 
torted.  "I'm  ready  to  sign  the  papers  the  minute  I  get  the 
dough.  Where's  it  at?" 

"I  wish  I  knew." 

"  Then  you  help  me  search  these  folks.  Search  everybody ! 
You  can  begin  on  me." 

April  spoke  up,  "You  can  follow  with  me." 

Kate  put  up  her  arms,  "I  insist  on  being  cleared." 

158 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  terrified.  "  Gre't  Heavens !  I  wonder 
if  it  could  have  flown  over  to  me."  She  turned  out  a  pocket 
and  began  to  feel  about  her  skirts  and  step  aside  as  if  she 
might  be  standing  on  it. 

Joe  gave  her  a  contemptuous  laugh.  Her  panic  was  her 
alibi.  But  he  was  furious  at  the  loss  of  his  wealth.  He 
growled  at  everybody  in  general  and  nobody  in  particular. 

"Say!  Say!  Say!  Somebody's  gona  slip  that  cash  to 
me  quick,  or  I'm  gona  turn  the  bulls  loose  in  here." 

"The  bulls!"  Mrs.  Summerlin  fretted.  "What  are  the 
bulls?" 

' '  Agh !"  Joe  raged.    ' '  Thuh  pullice ;  thuh  pullice !" 

Bob  spoke  ominously:  "Don't  worry,  Mrs.  Summerlin. 
Mr.  Yarmy  isn't  going  to  call  any  police  into  your  apart 
ment." 

"Oh,  ain't  I?"  Joe  shouted. 

Kate  gave  him  a  look  like  a  jab  with  a  knife.  "No,  you 
ain't  I!  It  would  be  well  for  you  to  rememba,  Joe,  that 
you're  not  in  Texas." 

Joe  subsided.  "Agh!  Can't  you  take  a  joke?  I'm  not 
gona  make  any  trouble.  But  I'm  gona  find  that  five.  Let's 
search  the  place.  A  draft  of  wind  might  have  blew  the  bills 
off  the  table." 

He  led  in  a  frantic  ransacking  of  every  nook  and  cranny. 
Everybody  joined  him,  and  there  was  so  much  running  about 
on  hands  and  knees  that  a  stranger  who  walked  in  would 
have  wondered  what  childhood  game  was  being  played  that 
these  bipeds  grew  quadrupedal.  But  the  hunt  found  no  trace 
of  the  quarry.  Not  one  of  the  five  bills  was  discovered. 

When  Joe,  still  on  his  hands  and  knees,  turned  from  look 
ing  up  the  chimney  and  trying  to  keep  out  of  the  ashes  on 
the  hearth,  the  hum  of  the  vacuum-cleaner  up-stairs  caught 
his  ear. 

He  whirled  on  his  knees,  sat  upon  his  haunches,  listened, 
demanded: 

"Who's  makin'  that  noise?" 

Bob  answered:  "That's  my  boy  Zeb  cleaning  up-stairs. 
He  wouldn't  steal  from  me." 

Joe  started  up  the  steps.   "Maybe  he'd  steal  from  me." 

"But  he  hasn't  been  down  here,"  Bob  protested. 

"It  won't  hurt  to  give  him  the  once-over,"  said  Joe. 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Bob  did  not  fancy  the  thought  of  Joe's  invading  the  upper 
regions  of  Mrs.  Summerlin's  home.  He  said: 

"Wait!    I'll  call  him  down.    Zeb!    Oh,  Zeb!"  . 

The  murmur  ceased.  Zeb  shuffled  to  the  rail  and  looked 
over: 

"You  call  me,  Masta  Bob?" 

"Yes.     Did  you  see — " 

Joe  brokein  with  ironiclilt,"Comedown,sweetevening  star!" 

Zeb  looked  to  Bob  for  orders  and  obeyed  his  nod.  As  he 
clumped  down,  followed  by  Pansy,  Joe  laughed  and  quoted 
the  song,  '"Some  folks  say  a  nigga  won't  steal.'  There's 
two  coons  here.  I  reckon  one  of  'em's  got  the  stuff." 

When  Zeb  arrived  he  stood  blinking  his  eyes.  Pansy 
took  her  post  at  his  side,  a  little  less  advanced,  like  the 
adjutant  of  a  black  battalion. 

Bob  explained.  "Zeb — and  Pansy — I  laid  five  thousand 
dollars  in  bills  on  this  table  a  few  minutes  ago,  and — well, 
it  isn't  here." 

"It  belonged  to  me,"  Joe  put  in,  closing  on  Zeb  as  if  he 
would  scare  it  out  of  him.  And  if  Zeb  had  had  the  money 
on  him,  he  would  have  shivered  it  off  as  his  wild  eyes  fast 
ened  on  Joe's  ferocious  glare.  With  the  manner  of  a  police 
man  putting  a  suspect  through  the  third  degree,  Joe  roared : 

"Come  through,  coon,  and  come  through  clean.  We  all 
know  you  stole  that  money;  so  cough!" 

Zeb  did  not  mean  to  be  literal.  His  terror  choked  him 
and  he  coughed.  But  he  did  not  cough  the  money.  He 
backed  away  from  Joe's  hands  to  ask: 

'You  say  that  money  was  down  year?" 

'Yes.    You  know  it  was." 

'Did  I?    Well,  then,  did  anybody  see  me  down  year?" 

'No,  but— " 

'Well,  how's  me  gwine  took  it?  Does  you-all  think  I'm 
a  jyraffe?" 

Joe  persisted.  "Well,  somebody  took  it,  and  I'm  goin* 
through  you,  coon." 

Zeb  edged  away  again. 

Joe  laughed  triumphantly.  "See,  you're  afraid  to  be 
frisked." 

Zeb  answered,  with  much  dignity, "  I  ain't  afraid  of  nothin', 
but  I  don't  allow  no  Naw+he'n  gemman  to  call  me  no  coon." 

1 60 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

Joe  laughed.  "MeNawthe'n!  I  come  from  Texas,  where 
we  don't  stand  no  nonsense  from  nigs." 

Bob  intervened  to  protect  his  own.  "You  didn't  take  it, 
did  you,  Zeb?" 

With  an  honesty  that  could  not  be  doubted,  Zeb  raised 
his  right  hand  and  solemnly  affirmed: 

"Masta  Bob,  I  swa'  to  the  Lawd  I  ain't  newa  laid  hands 
on  ary  money  this  day  'ceptin'  that  fifty  you  gin  me  fer  ma 
trousseau." 

" I  believe  you,  Zeb,"  said  Bob,  "but  Mr.  Yarmy  may  not. 
I  want  you  to  let  him  search  you." 

Zeb  held  up  both  hands  now  in  the  attitude  of  surrender : 
' '  Whatewa  is  yo'  desiah  is  mine,  Masta  Bob.  Mistoo  Yahmy 
can  go  thoo  me  wit'  a  telescope  or  a  X-ray,  ef  he  wants  to." 

Joe  jammed  his  fingers  into  various  pockets  and  prodded 
and  buffeted  him  here  and  there  with  no  excess  of  delicacy. 
Nothing  was  more  convincing  than  Zeb's  helpless  giggles  as 
he  protested : 

"Be  keerful,  Mistoo  Man,  you're  nachelly  ticklin'  me  to 
death." 

Yarmy  flung  on  the  table  every  object  he  found. 

The  entire  loot  of  the  raid  was  an  old  pipe,  a  pouch  of 
tobacco,  a  few  coins,  a  few  business  cards,  a  comb,  a  key  or 
two,  a  small  monkey-wrench,  a  nub  of  lead-pencil,  a  hand 
kerchief,  and  Bob's  fifty-dollar  bill.  Yarmy  was  bitterly 
disappointed,  but  Bob  felt  a  glow  of  affection  for  his  new 
servant  who  had  come  past  the  ordeal  so  perfectly.  Pansy 
stood  watching  the  search  and  her  welling  anger  showed 
how  much  dearer  Zeb's  dignity  was  to  her  than  she  would 
have  admitted. 

Joe  looked  at  her  next.  She  narrowed  her  eyes,  arched  her 
back,  tightened  her  claws,  and  drew  back  her  lips  like  an 
old  cat  about  to  spit.  She  answered  before  he  spoke: 

"I'm  a  'spectable  woman,  young  man,  and  I  don't  'low 
no  familiarities.  I  ain't  saw  yo'  money  any  mo'  than  what 
Zeb  has.  Him  and  I  been  up-stairs  ewa  since  I  let  you  in, 
and  you-all  just  wastin'  yo'  time  foolin'  wit'  us." 

Pansy,  like  many  a  more  eminent  witness  at  a  se"ance, 
had  solemnly  testified  to  more  than  she  really  knew.  She 
had  forgotten  that  she  had  left  Zeb  alone  for  several  minutes 
and  had  not  known  what  he  did  or  where  he  went. 

161 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

When  the  true  explanations  are  found  of  these  baffling 
phenomena,  they  are  usually  disgustingly  simple,  and  almost 
always  have  an  element  of  guile,  very  loving  deceit,  perhaps, 
but  deceit. 

This  mystic  rape  of  five  thousand  dollars  might  have 
gone  into  the  annals  of  any  number  of  psychical  research 
societies,  if  the  losers  had  not  been  more  interested  in  its 
recovery  than  in  metaphysics. 

Uncle  Zeb  was  the  god  that  wreaked  this  wonder.  He 
had  opposed  the  whole  transaction  with  the  Yarmys.  Dur 
ing  the  decision  to  flip  a  coin  nobody  had  looked  up  to  the 
balcony  where  he  lurked. 

When  the  coin  rolled  and  everybody  frantically  ran  to 
heave  away  the  big  divan,  fate  played  the  old  trick  of  dis 
tracting  the  attention  of  the  semi-spectators.  Zeb  stared 
down  at  his  master's  wealth  spread  beneath  him  in  orderly 
array.  He  muttered  to  himself,  "Oh,  Lawd!  ef  I  could  on'y 
git  ma  hands  on  them  beautiful  bills!" 

His  hand,  still  clutching  the  long  nozle  of  the  vacuum- 
cleaner,  went  down  toward  them  yearningly.  The  motor 
was  running.  The  machine  inspired  him.  The  nozle  seemed 
to  be  a  gigantic  forefinger.  By  letting  it  down  to  its  full 
length  it  just  touched  the  table. 

The  fierce  intake  of  its  breath  whisked  the  first  bill  into 
its  maw.  Zeb's  eyes  and  mouth  gaped.  He  breathed  a 
prayer  to  the  next  bill. 

"  Come  on  in,  honey !"  It  came. 

He  invoked  the  next.  "  Git  to  me,  baby !" 

The  next,  "Hop  along,  chile!" 

The  last,  "Run  home!" 

The  five  bills  had  fluttered  like  little  birds  into  the  ser 
pent's  throat.  Zeb,  almost  fainting  with  the  audacity  of 
his  deed,  hardly  found  strength  to  draw  up  the  hose.  He 
tiptoed  to  the  adjoining  room  and  set  the  nozle  to  the  floor, 
praying  that  his  terror  might  not  shake  him  to  pieces. 

That  was  all.  He  had  not  exactly  lied  when  he  swore  that 
he  had  never  laid  hands  on  the  money.  When  he  went 
down  the  steps  at  Joe's  demand  he  left  the  money  above, 
of  course,  in  the  vacuum-cleaner. 

As  the  magicians  say,  "  Mah-vee-lious !    Mah-vee-lious !" 

162 


CHAPTER  II 

IT  was  the  vanity  of  his  search  and  Pansy's  absolute  cer 
tainty  and  manifest  honesty  that  convinced  Joe  Yarmy 
of  Zeb's  innocence.  He  tossed  his  hands  and  gave  up  with 
a  last  command: 

"Go  on  back  to  your  roost." 

Zeb  paused  to  ask,  "Huccum  you-all  lef  so  much  wealth 
layin'  out  year?" 

Bob  explained  sheepishly.  "We  tossed  a  half-dollar  to 
see  whether  or  not  I'd  invest  in  Mr.  Yarmy 's  oil-wells,  and 
the  coin  rolled  under  the  divan,  and  we  all  went  after  it." 

Zeb  could  not  forbear  a  bit  of  venerable  reproof.  "Kind 
o'  funny  to  resk  five  thousand  dollas  on  one  half-dolla, 
ain't  it?  Looks  to  me  like  a  sign  you  ain't  wanted  to  put 
that  money  in  them  oil-wells." 

Bob  winced  at  this  undeniable  wisdom  from  this  source. 
He  motioned  Zeb  to  the  stairs.  Zeb  mounted  part  way  and 
turned  to  ask: 

"Whose  half-dolla  was  it?" 

"What  difference  does  that  make?"  Bob  answered,  still 
more  impatiently. 

"Was  it  yours,  Masta  Bob?"  Zeb  persisted.  Bob  shook 
his  head  angrily.  Zeb  gazed  at  Mr.  Yarmy  and  said  very 
respectfully: 

"Would  you  min'  leavin'  me  look  at  that  half-dolla, 
Mistoo  Yarmy?" 

Joe  darted  angrily  toward  the  stairway.  ' '  What  you  gettin' 
at,  nigga?" 

Bob  checked  him  and  ordered  Zeb  to  go  on  up-stairs. 
The  old  man  obeyed  his  master's  nod. 

Joe  turned  to  Bob  and  said:  "Well,  Mr.  Taxta,  I  reckon 
that  money's  gone  now,  for  sure.  It's  bound  to  turn  up 
somewhere,  but  I  can't  wait.  You  got  another  five  thousand 
in  the  bank.  You  give  me  a  check  for  that  or  come  and  draw 

163 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

out  the  cash.    I'll  give  you  a  receipt,  and  then  you  can  keep 
the  lost  money  when  you  find  it." 

Zeb  leaned  out  over  the  balcony  rail  to  hear  this,  and  April 
felt  a  new  alarm.  But  Bob  had  invested  heavily  enough  for 
one  day.  He  had  lost  his  taste  for  speculation.  He  shook 
his  head. 

"No,  Mr.  Yarmy,  I  reckon  you'd  better  count  me  out. 
I  won't  decide  what  to  do  with  the  balance  till  I  find  what 
happened  to  this  money.  I'm  sorry  you've  had  all  this 
trouble,  but  you  won't  be  out  anything,  for  you  have  another 
man  waiting  to  buy  in  with  you." 

Joe  shifted  from  foot  to  foot,  exchanged  a  glance  or  two 
with  Kate,  and  nodded  his  head,  like  the  good  sport  he  was. 

"All  right,  brotha.  If  you  should  find  the  money  in  the 
next  houah  or  tew,  you  got  my  telephone  numba." 

He  and  Kate  shook  hands  all  round  and  took  their  de 
parture.  Since  that  was  all  they  took,  April  was  able  to  be 
almost  polite  to  Kate  as  she  bade  her  good-by;  but  she  did 
not  ask  her  to  call  again. 

When  the  door  closed  on  the  Yarmys  Bob  fell  into  a  chair. 
April  and  her  mother  dropped  to  the  displaced  divan.  No 
one  spoke  till  Zeb's  voice  came  down  from  aloft: 

"I  wisht  you'd  'a'  made  him  show  that  half-dolla,  Masta 
Bob." 

Bob  looked  up  in  anger  at  the  annoyance  and  grumbled, 
"Get  back  to  your  work." 

Zeb  answered:  "Yassa!  But  you  know,  Masta  Bob,  they 
is  money  made  that  has  both  sides  the  same." 

Bob  was  indignant.  The  implication  of  credulity  was 
intolerable,  coming  from  a  stupid  old  negro.  He  answered, 
with  some  petulance: 

"Well,  even  if  it  was  a  phony  coin,  he  didn't  make  any 
thing  out  of  it." 

"No,"  Zeb  chuckled,  "de  Lawd  is  mo'  powersome  than 
some  crooks." 

Bob  was  thinking  of  Zeb's  impudent  and  obstinate  sus 
picion  rather  than  of  his  piety  when  he  muttered,  "You've 
been  in  New  York  too  long." 

Zeb  shouted  at  this:  "You  said  it,  Masta  Bob.  I's  raidy 
to  go  back  to  ol'  V'ginia  the  moment  you  says  the  word." 

"We're  not  going  back  to  Virginia,"  said  Bob,  "and  if 

164 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

you  don't  finish  your  work  up  there,  you  can  give  me  back 
that  fifty  and  go  back  to  being  your  own  boss." 

Zeb's  answer  to  this  was  a  melliflous  wheedle,  "You  'ain't 
give  me  our  new  address,  Masta  Bob." 

Bob  laughed,  told  him  the  number  and  name  of  his  apart 
ment-house,  the  Deucalion,  and  then  looked  at  his  watch. 

"Speaking  of  Virginia,"  he  said,  "my  mother  is  on  her 
way  from  there,  and  I've  got  to  meet  the  one-six  train." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  gave  him  messages  of  love  and  welcome 
for  her  old  friend,  and  April  seconded  them.  She  had  often 
thought  of  Mrs.  Taxter  as  her  future  mother-in-law,  and  had 
thought  well  of  her  in  that  delicate  post.  Yet  now  that  she 
had  seen  Miss  Yarmy,  her  rival,  driven  from  the  field,  she 
felt  that  her  victory  had  brought  her  no  nearer  to  Bob. 

Bob  lifted  himself  from  the  chair.  He  felt  tons  heavier, 
relieved  of  the  burden  of  half  of  his  money;  for  half  of  his 
wings  of  dream  were  gone  from  his  shoulders.  If  April  had 
been  far  away  when  he  had  ten  thousand  dollars,  she  had 
removed  to  a  further  infinity  now  that  he  was  reduced  to 
five.  He  had  not  even  had  the  pleasure  of  squandering  it. 
He  had  not  had  a  run  for  his  money.  Between  the  mystery 
and  the  fact  of  its  evaporation  he  was  too  befuddled  to 
think  of  love  or  marriage.  He  was  very  tired,  and  his  fare 
well  was  only  a  sigh,  a  sickly  smile,  and  a  feeble  handclasp. 

When  he  had  gone  April  and  her  mother  turned  once  more 
to  a  minute  search  for  the  money.  They  called  Pansy  and 
Zeb  down  to  help  in  the  search,  and  no  one  was  more  fertile 
in  suggestions  or  more  zealous  in  moving  heavy  objects 
about  than  Zeb. 

In  the  year  1919  there  was  a  peculiar  mania  for  the  most 
idealistic  theorizing  and  for  superstitious  maunderings  em 
ploying  the  logic  of  the  African  medicine-men.  During  the 
war  many  of  the  soldiers  went  back  to  the  belief  in  charms 
and  amulets,  and  to  the  jaunty  fatalism  and  predestination 
of  Mohammedan  and  Presbyterian  tenets.  As  Lincoln  said 
of  our  Civil  War,  both  sides  said  prayers  to  the  same  God 
for  victory  over  the  ungodly  enemy. 

During  and  after  the  war  books  and  magazine  articles  in 
floods  proclaimed  marvels  of  communication  with  the  dead, 
of  the  movement  of  heavy  objects  without  contact,  of  thought 

165 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

transference,  of  all  sorts  of  new  and  old  demonstrations  that 
the  moon  is  made  of  green  cheese  and  the  air  is  filled  with 
busy  ghosts.  These  books  almost  outnumbered  all  other 
forms  of  fiction.  Astrological  horoscopes  were  published 
every  day  in  many  newspapers,  repeating  almost  the  very 
words  of  the  Babylonian  seers  of  thousands  of  years  ago. 
Yet  people  talk  of  progress ! 

Some  drew  beautiful  lessons  from  the  kindly  intervention 
of  souls  that  had  "passed  over,"  but  came  back  on  call. 
Others  admitted  that  spirits  were  at  work,  but  insisted  that 
they  were  the  evil  spirits  described  in  the  Bible. 

The  more  the  accounts  of  the  world  beyond  differed  the 
more  their  truth  was  accepted.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  gave 
stenographic  reports  of  conversations  through  women  medi 
ums  or  through  tipsy  tables  that  "shook  with  laughter," 
and  his  dead  son,  identified  beyond  doubt,  told  him  how 
they  have  tweed  clothes,  whisky,  cigars,  and  even  manure 
in  heaven.  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  on  the  other  hand, 
proved  that  in  heaven  all  people  gravitate  toward  a  com 
mon  age,  the  old  meeting  the  young  half-way.  In  one  of  the 
sublimest  passages  of  humorlessness  known  to  human  liter 
ature  he  reassured  his  readers  that  they  need  not  be  afraid 
of  heaven  lest  they  should  have  to  go  naked  there,  for  he 
had  communications  proving  that  the  beautiful  virtue  of 
modesty  was  not  left  behind  on  earth.  Clothes  were  in 
celestial  fashion. 

Heavens,  half-heavens,  midway  passages,  transfer  stations 
— all  sorts  of  places  were  mapped  out  by  eye-witnesses  dic 
tating  their  travelers'  tales  to  earth-bound  amanuenses. 
Every  story  was  specific,  and  the  only  bewildering  thing 
about  them  was  that  no  two  accounts  agreed  in  any  im 
portant  particular.  In  every  case  the  absolute  respectability 
of  the  witnesses  was  established  beyond  cavil.  It  was 
merely  their  affidavits  that  conflicted.  Never  had  so  many 
poor  souls  been  so  horribly  bereaved  as  by  the  unexampled 
slaughter  of  this  war.  The  vast  army  of  mourners  fell  prey 
to  a  vast  army  of  tricksters  of  a  peculiar  and  vulturine 
loathsomeness  feeding  on  the  hearts  of  the  living,  and 
vending  conversations  with  the  dead  to  distracted  parents 
and  lovers,  giving  vague  glimpses  of  the  dead  in  cabinets, 
receiving  letters  from  them  by  pen,  pencil,  and  ouija,  and 

166 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

usually  charging  as  much  as  the  traffic  would  bear.  Like 
vultures,  they  fought  with  one  another  over  the  unresisting 
quarry.  Intellectually,  the  world  had  gone  back  en  masse 
to  the  days  of  the  witches  and  wizards. 

The  ouija-board  came  into  amazing  power  and  threatened 
to  drive  the  piano  and  the  ukulele  out  of  use.  A  lady  in  St. 
Louis  wrote  a  number  of  poems  under  the  "unquestionable" 
control  of  a  seventeenth-century  lady,  who  spoke  a  dialect 
never  known  on  earth  at  any  period.  These  had  such  suc 
cess  that  the  versatile  spook  wrote  novels  of  other  periods, 
one  of  them  a  vivid  eye-witness  picture  of  the  times  of 
Christ. 

Other  ladies  in  the  mid-West  brought  Mark  Twain  back 
from  the  dead  and  made  him  write  humorous  works.  This 
was  a  good  joke  on  the  immortal  Mark,  since  his  ouijacious 
books  competed  with  his  posthumous  books,  in  which  he 
fiercely  combated  the  religious  traditions  of  his  country. 
It  must  be  an  inconvenience  even  in  Paradise  to  learn  that 
you  may  be  yanked  out  of  blissful  communion  with  the 
immortals  at  any  moment  by  the  command  of  any  medium 
to  whom  any  believer  pays  two  dollars. 

An  improvement  on  the  ouija-board,  which  is  at  best  a 
rather  cumbersome  form  of  typewriter,  was  the  invention 
of  automatic  writing.  Imitators  of  Mrs.  Piper  and  her 
school  sat  at  a  table  and  held  pen  or  pencil  while  people 
from  the  other  world  wrote  descriptions,  philosophical  dis 
sertations,  and  moral  treatises  on  conditions  across  the  grave. 
They  answered  questions  and  in  every  instance  gave  abso 
lute  proof  that  fraud  was  inconceivable.  Mr.  Basil  King 
published  a  volume  of  beautiful  cable-matter  written  by 
a  young  girl  who  could  not  possibly  have  known  what  she 
was  writing — he  was  sure  of  that.  It  is  fine  to  find  somebody 
who  still  thinks  he  knows  all  a  young  girl  knows. 

As  you  can  tell  solid  silver  by  the  hall-mark,  sterling, 
so  you  can  tell  occultism  by  the  phrase  always  stamped  on 
it  in  the  formulas  to  the  effect  that  what  is  described  is  giv 
en  on  the  testimony  of  absolutely  honest  persons  with  no 
motive  for  deception,  and  that  every  precaution  has  been 
taken  against  fraud. 

Yet  there  is  a  little  cinder  in  the  eyes  of  all  these  visions ; 
none  of  these  miracles  is  ever  allowed  to  influence  everyday 
12  167 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

existence  or  set  up  new  standards.  Evidence  that  establishes 
our  whole  eternal  future  is  not  permitted  to  sway  us  in  the 
purchase  of  shoes  or  the  trial  of  sneak-thieves.  Real  money 
and  real  life  make  a  tremendous  difference. 

So  the  poor  Summerlin  household  continued  to  search 
for  Bob's  ghostly  money.  The  culprit  Zeb  did  not  have  to 
mimic  gloom.  He  knew  where  the  money  was,  but  he  did 
not  know  what  to  do  with  it. 

To  return  it  now  and  confess  the  incredible  audacity  of 
its  theft  was  to  invite  one  or  both  of  two  disasters — an  in 
stant,  a  permanent  exile  from  Bob's  favor  or  the  prompt 
delivery  of  the  money  to  the  unbearable  Yarmys.  He  was 
so  frantic  with  his  dilemma  that  he  was  glad  of  an  excuse 
to  run  about  in  a  futile  paper-chase. 

Fatigue  alone  put  an  end  to  the  nimrnage.  Mrs.  Sum- 
merlin  sent  Pansy  to  get  luncheon  ready  and  Zeb  to  finish 
his  work  up-stairs;  then  she  dropped  into  a  chair  opposite 
the  exhausted  April.  Their  legs  and  arms  had  struck,  but 
their  eyes  kept  working  and  kept  raising  new  hopes  that 
lifted  the  weary  bodies  and  lured  them  to  some  spot  already 
pried  into  a  dozen  times. 

When  even  their  eyes  had  tired  of  patrolling  the  room 
their  minds  continued  to  scrutinize  theories.  Mrs.  Summer 
lin  recurred  to  the  possibility  of  ghosts.  They  make  a  con 
venient  explanation  of  strange  sounds  at  night  and  of  odd 
optical  illusions,  but  few  people  really  believe  in  them,  since 
the  one  test  of  genuine  belief  is  practice.  A  creed  to  which 
we  pay  only  lip-service  is  only  a  sham. 

Many  learned  volumes  and  tons  of  psychical  research  re 
ports  have  been  devoted  to  the  noisy  and  mischievous 
species  of  imp  called  the  Poltergeist,  but  his  playground  is 
the  dark  and  lonely  room  where  he  can  throw  sticks  about, 
break  crockery,  and  otherwise  amuse  himself  according  to 
his  peculiarly  infantile,  not  to  say  imbecile,  tastes.  He  is 
not  the  sort  of  flibbertigibbet  that  would  flow  through  a 
keyhole  and  carry  off  five  thousand-dollar  bills,  especially 
as  the  bills,  not  being  spiritualized,  would  have  undoubtedly 
attracted  attention  if  the  invisible  fairy  carried  them  visibly 
across  the  room. 

There  are  numberless  instances  of  wrecked  railroad  trains, 
dead  men's  clothes,  clanking  chains,  armor,  swords,  pistols, 

168 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

shoes,  stockings,  horses,  dogs,  wigs,  and  what  not  being 
materialized  from  the  grave  for  the  entertainment  of  those 
who  can  "see  things."  Every  tribe  of  savages  and  every 
modern  community,  all  the  religions  and  all  the  gods,  have 
had  revenants,  not  merely  of  souls,  but  also  of  shoes,  sandals, 
weapons,  and  decent  clothing.  As  Conan  Doyle  points  out, 
nice  ghosts  do  not  go  naked.  But  there  are  few  if  any  in 
stances  of  ghosts  dematerializing  current  objects  of  furniture, 
wardrobe,  or  finance.  The  fairies  in  Ireland  often  misplace 
objects,  but  they  are  not  seriously  charged  with  theft. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  toyed  with  the  ghostly  explanation,  but 
it  did  not  begin  to  satisfy  her  and  it  began  to  irritate  April 
into  a  state  of  nerves.  Mrs.  Sumrnerlin  dropped  the  theory 
finally  when  April  snapped: 

"Don't  be  an  idiot,  mother." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  sat  quiet  for  a  time;  then  she  gave  a 
start.  She  remembered  reading  something  about  clairvoy 
ants  who  could  find  lost  objects  and  do  all  sorts  of  wonderful 
things.  She  had  cut  out  an  advertisement  of  such  a  miracle- 
monger.  In  some  of  the  cities,  though  not  in  New  York, 
these  silly  cheats  were  permitted  to  prey  upon  the  foolish 
public,  provided  they  took  out  a  city  license ! 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  rash  enough  to  say,  "Didn't  I  see 
something  in  the  paper  about  a  clairvoyant  who  could  find 
lost  objects  and  stolen  things  and  give  all  sorts  of  wonderful 
information?" 

"Yes,  mother  darling!"  April  groaned. 

When  April  said  "mother  darling,"  Mrs.  Summerlm 
always  knew  that  she  was  in  for  a  bit  of  filial  castigation  for 
her  own  good.  She  got  it  now. 

"You  read  in  the  paper  that  one  clairvoyant  lost  some 
money  of  her  own  and  appealed  to  the  police  to  get  it  back ; 
and  you  read  that  another  was  arrested  for  telling  fortunes ; 
the  poor  fool  didn't  even  know  that  the  woman  she  was 
telling  the  fortune  to  was  really  a  woman  detective  gathering 
evidence  against  her." 

"Oh!"  said  the  humbled  mother,  meekly,  looking  down 
at  her  fingers  and  feeling  quite  spanked. 

April  went  on.  "  If  you're  thinking  of  voodoo  and  charms, 
let's  call  Pansy  out  of  the  kitchen  and  give  her  some  tea- 
grounds  or  a  pack  of  cards." 

169 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  vexed  almost  to  insubordination,  but 
Pansy  appeared  timely  and  announced  luncheon. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  called  Zeb  down  to  finish  the  studio 
while  they  were  in  the  dining-room.  And  when  the  dismal- 
meal  was  finished  she  sent  him  into  the  dining-room  to 
vacuum-clean  that.  He  also  cleaned  up  some  cold  luncheon 
in  the  kitchen,  at  Pansy's  more  or  less  insulting  invitation. 
Then  he  appeared  before  Mrs.  Summerlin  and  bade  her  a 
very  good  day.  She  was  thinking  of  Bob's  lost  money  too 
intently  to  remember  Zeb's  money,  and  so  she  bade  him  good 
day  absently.  He  bade  her  good  day  once  more  with  an 
unmistakable  inflection  that  called  for  wages.  She  paid  him 
well  and  wished  him  well  and  urged  him  to  take  great  care 
of  his  young  master,  who  was  very  young. 

Zeb  reassured  her.  "Have  no  fears,  Miz  Sum'lin,  I  been 
young  mase'f,  and  I  been  old.  That's  mo'  than  what  folks 
kin  say  who  has  only  been  young." 

As  he  lugged  his  machine  through  the  kitchen  to  the 
freight  elevator,  he  promised  Pansy  that  he  would  come  and 
see  her. 

"Wait  till  somebody  'vites  you,"  she  snapped. 

Zeb  just  laughed  and  chortled,  "Lawdy!  but  it  does 
ma  old  soul  good  to  find  you  jes'  the  same  little  spit-cat  I 
lef  behime  when  you  and  me  was  little." 

But  as  the  elevator  took  Zeb  down  it  took  his  contentment 
down  with  it.  The  grin  that  had  spread  like  molasses  over  his 
face  fermented  to  old  sorghum.  All  triumphs  turn  out  to 
be  burdens  finally,  as  the  great  world  was  beginning  to  dis 
cover.  Its  rulers,  the  League-makers  in  Paris,  were  still 
wrangling  among  themselves,  and  when  they  returned  to 
their  several  countries  they  would  find  new  wrangles  at 
home  and  a  multitudinous  dissatisfaction  that  threatened 
to  convert  the  victory  into  ruin. 

Old  Zeb  left  the  Summerlin  apartment  with  more  loot 
than  he  had  ever  expected  to  look  at  at  one  time.  He  had 
five  thousand  dollars  in  the  container  of  his  vacuum-cleaner, 
but  it  began  to  grow  so  heavy  that  he  felt  sure  the  five  lit 
tle  slips  of  paper  were  transmuted  into  bushels  of  silver 
dollars.  He  was  afraid  that  burglars  would  break  in  and 
steal.  He  had  always  felt  before  that  his  rags  were  armor 
against  footpads  —  cavtabit  wcuus  coram  latrone  viator, 

170 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

But  now  innocent  passengers  who  glanced  at  his  baggage 
seemed  to  him  to  look  at  it  with  suspicion  and  covetous- 
ness.  Finally  Zeb  grew  conspicuous,  for  there  is  no  more 
certain  way  to  attract  attention  than  to  be  desperately 
eager  to  avoid  it. 


i  CHAPTER  III 

'TEB  hastened  so  like  a  thief,  he  rewarded  the  most  indif- 
Z.J  ferent  look  with  such  a  glare,  that  people  began  to  turn 
and  wonder.  If  there  had  been  a  policeman  handy,  they 
would  probably  have  sent  him  on  an  errand  after  Zeb.  But 
they  were  too  busy  to  take  up  the  pursuit.  When  Zeb  at  last 
reached  the  small  room  in  West  Fifty-third  Street  which 
served  as  his  office  and  his  residence,  he  locked  himself  in, 
pulled  down  the  shade,  turned  on  a  light,  took  off  the  lid  of 
the  container,  and  dumped  out  the  contents.  There  among 
the  rubbish  he  was  almost  surprised  to  find  the  five  magic 
plasters,  twisted  by  the  suction  and  the  swift  passage  through 
the  hose  into  little  wads  and  lamplighters. 

Zeb  caressed  them  and  talked  to  them  and  called  them 
"honeys"  and  "chillun."  But  he  was  afraid  of  them.  It 
would  be  so  easy  for  them  to  be  blown  away  or  set  on  fire. 
It  would  be  so  hard  to  protect  them  from  the  unimaginable 
horror  of  loss.  Where  could  he  put  them?  He  would  as 
soon  have  carried  five  copperhead  snakes  on  his  person  as 
kept  them  about  him.  To  leave  them  in  his  office  was  his 
only  other  recourse;  yet  he  debated  it  until  he  was  almost 
out  of  his  wits. 

He  told  himself  that  a  burglar  would  never  waste  time 
or  skill  on  such  a  den  as  his,  and  yet  he  felt  that  thieves 
must  have  a  scent  for  money  as  bloodhounds  for  runaways. 
He  studied  where  he  might  best  hide  the  bills,  and  tested  a 
dozen  crannies.  He  thought  of  the  very  scheme  Poe  used 
in  The  Purloined  Letter,  though  he  had  never  heard  of  Poe 
or  his  story.  He  arrived  at  the  wise  decision  that  the 
trick  of  hiding  them  by  leaving  them  in  plain  view  was  too 
risky.  Poe  was  able  to  make  his  story  come  out  the  way  he 
wanted  it  to,  but  Zeb  could  not  control  his  visitors. 

There  was  another  danger — the  most  terrible  thief  of  all — 
fire.  Fire  would  stick  its  slim,  red  fingers  into  any  crevice 

172 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

and  spend  the  money  instanter.  He  reckoned  that  there 
would  be  a  partial  safety  in  the  metal  container,  and  put  the 
bills  and  the  rubbish  back  where  they  had  been.  He  draped 
an  old  coat  over  the  thing  with  a  painful  effort  to  secure  a 
look  of  carelessness. 

But  he  dared  not  leave  the  treasure  there.  It  would  be 
best  on  all  counts  to  have  it  in  his  master's  home.  Then, 
whatever  happened,  he  could  protest  his  innocence  of  theft. 

So  he  set  out  for  the  Deucalion.  He  felt  rich  and  important 
enough  now  to  take  a  taxicab.  When  he  reached  the  hotel 
he  learned  that  Bob  had  gone  out,  but  had  left  word  that 
Zeb  was  to  be  admitted  to  his  rooms.  The  sight  of  Bob's 
possessions  gave  him  a  sense  of  wonderful  repose.  He  felt 
himself  to  be  one  of  the  Taxter  possessions,  long  astray,  but 
retrieved  at  last. 

The  black  prodigal  had  finished  with  the  husks  of  inde 
pendence.  The  hunter  was  home  from  the  hill,  and  the  slave 
was  home  from  freedom. 

Zeb  had  been  a  slave,  the  son  and  grandson  of  slaves. 
The  meek  genealogy  of  his  family  traced  back  to  some  an 
cestor  who  came  over  in  no  Mayflower,  but  in  the  steerage 
of  those  dreadful  hulks  that  dragged  from  Africa  and  sold 
to  America  a  problem  that  it  will  never  solve.  It  was  not 
Zeb's  fault  that  his  forebears  had  been  stolen  from  the  con 
tinent  that  had  sunburnt  them,  and  had  been  transported 
to  a  continent  where  their  tint  would  be  their  guilt. 

Nor  was  it  the  fault  of  the  white  people  of  this  generation 
that  such  hideous  merchandise  had  been  dealt  in  by  ances 
tors  to  whom  slavery  had  a  patriarchal  and  a  scriptural 
authority.  The  earlier  generations  had  debated  the  riddle 
for  more  than  half  a  century  in  Congress,  and  then  for  four 
years  on  bloody  battle-fields.  The  slaves  had  been  pro 
claimed  free  and  their  new  status  written  among  the  statutes, 
but  it  is  easy  to  amend  legal  laws  and  hard  to  achieve  amend 
ments  of  the  human  constitution.  Negroes  were  still  born 
black  in  spite  of  Lincoln  and  Grant. 

Thousands  of  them  had  recently  been  put  into  the  uniform 
and  sent  under  the  flag  to  France.  There  some  of  them  had 
met  glory  and  a  glorious  death.  Into  all  of  them  had  been 
instilled  the  doctrine  that  they  were  citizens  and  defenders 
of  liberty.  The  sympathizers  with  Germany  had  counted 

173 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

upon  black  revolutions,  but  the  negroes  had  run  no  amucks 
in  1918,  as  they  had  run  none  in  1862.  And  yet  the  old 
docility  was  no  longer  universal  among  them.  The  pride 
that  upheld  them  overseas  persisted  when  they  came  home, 
and  the  race  problem  was  added  to  the  labor  crisis,  and  both 
to  the  chaos  of  crises  that  kept  the  world  tremulous. 

In  Washington  and  then  in  Chicago  and  other  cities  North 
and  South  race  riots  flamed  up  for  a  few  days,  and  white 
snipers  shot  down  negroes,  and  motor-cars  filled  with  armed 
negroes  made  forays  along  crowded  streets.  In  Omaha  a 
mob  would  burn  down  the  City  Hall  and  string  up  the  mayor 
to  get  to  a  vile  negro;  the  mayor  would  be  saved  just  before 
he  died,  and  through  the  midnight  streets  of  the  Nebraska 
city  fiends  would  race,  dragging  the  hanged  and  burned 
and  bullet-ridden  cadaver  of  the  negro  till  it  was  almost  worn 
away.  In  old  London  for  centuries  distinguished  citizens  had 
been  hanged,  drawn  over  the  cobbles,  cut  apart  and  stuck 
up  piecemeal  for  an  ornament  and  a  warning;  but  what  is 
legal  for  one  period  is  hideous  for  another,  and  the  African 
immigrants-in-spite-of-themselves  were  revenging  them 
selves  centuries  after  by  covering  the  United  States  with 
its  foulest  shames. 

The  terrors  were  brief,  but  they  were  ominous.  They 
proved  that  the  whites  would  rather  kill  and  torture  negroes 
than  grant  them  equality,  and  that  some  of  the  negroes 
would  rather  accept  death  than  accept  inequality.  Exactly 
the  same  things  had  happened  in  greater  degree  during  the 
centuries  of  debate  among  various  sects  of  the  Christian  and 
other  religions,  but  religious  deeds  as  well  as  legal  deeds 
go  in  and  out  of  fashion. 

Their  choice  was  so  well  understood  by  the  vast  bulk  of 
the  dark  populace  that  they  ordered  their  lives  and  their 
ambitions  and  pleasures  on  a  subordinate  plane.  Zeb  was 
one  of  these.  He  had  no  more  desire  to  be  one  of  the  whites 
than  a  tiger-lily  has  to  be  a  rose.  He  wanted  to  be  a  good 
man,  a  good  black  man,  and  take  the  goods  the  good  Lord 
provided  for  good  negroes.  His  heart  was  full  of  noble 
intentions,  of  wise  saws,  and  of  virtuous  precepts.  He  toiled 
hard  and  was  as  honest  as  his  lights  allowed.  He  was  as 
good  a  man  as  he  could  be,  and  he  trusted  that  his  reward 
would  be  delivered  to  him  in  another  world.  He  did  not  even 

174 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

wonder  whether  there  would  be  a  separate  negro  heaven 
or  not,  or  whether  or  not  he  should  find  himself  white  on  the 
other  side  of  Jordan. 

He  had  stolen  five  thousand  dollars,  of  course,  but  it  was 
for  the  sake  of  the  family  to  which  he  was  as  abjectly  de 
voted  as  an  English  peer  to  a  reigning  dynasty  or  an  Amer 
ican  to  his  political  party.  Zeb  was  an  hereditary  retainer 
of  the  house  of  Taxter  and  as  proud  of  his  servility  as  if  the 
name  were  York  or  Plantagenet.  He  wanted  to  give  the 
money  back  and  take  what  punishment  his  devotion  might 
win.  But  he  wanted  to  make  sure  that  it  should  not  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  unholy  house  of  Yarmy. 


CHAPTER  IV 

BOB'S  thoughts  of  the  Yarmys  were  a  swirl  of  contra 
dictory  impressions.  Joe  had  disappointed  and  angered 
him  by  his  uncouth  uproar  over  the  loss  of  the  money. 
Bob  had  never  thought  of  Joe  as  a  gentleman  by  instinct  or 
training.  Now  he  saw  that  he  was  a  noisy  and  an  ugly  rotter. 

But  he  could  find  nothing  to  complain  of  in  Kate's  be 
havior.  He  had  thought  of  her  as  a  lady  by  instinct,  though 
not  by  breeding.  She  had  been  far  more  courteous  to  April 
than  April  to  her.  She  had  replied  to  April's  insulting  in 
sinuations  with  the  soft  answers  that,  passing  from  one 
woman  to  another,  turn  wrath  into  fury. 

Bob  was  haunted  by  the  sad  look  in  Kate's  eyes  as  she 
bade  him  a  long  farewell  after  his  statement  that  the  deal 
was  off.  He  felt  now  that  he  had  been  needlessly  curt.  He 
had  said  nothing  personal  to  Kate,  but  had  let  her  go  out 
of  his  life  as  bluntly  as  if  she  had  been  the  merest  acquaint 
ance.  Yet  he  had  held  her  in  his  arms;  he  had  danced  with 
her  ardently  and  audaciously;  he  had  tried  to  kiss  her  and 
had  been  compelled  to  forgo  her  lips  and  treat  her  with 
respect.  He  had  thrilled  with  secret  thoughts  of  long  com 
munions  with  her,  of  a  partnership  in  the  oil-fields.  He  felt 
about  his  hand  now  the  warm  pressure  of  her  ringers.  They 
had  let  go  as  a  woman's  might  when  she  drowned.  Kate 
was  sinking  and  drowning  now  in  the  ocean  of  oblivion, 
the  ocean  made  up  of  the  throngs  we  might  have  known 
better,  might  have  known  wildly  well,  or  fatally. 

Bob  was  harrowed,  too,  by  the  puncture  of  the  huge  bubble 
of  his  dreams.  A  few  hours  ago  and  he  was  a  man  with  a 
future,  a  man  of  potential  wealth,  with  a  definite  plan  of 
campaign.  Now  he  was  a  young  fellow  with  half  his  fortune 
and  all  of  his  hopes  gone;  he  was  a  crass  youth  meeting  his 
mother  at  a  train. 

Bob  loved  his  mother  and  he  was  proud  of  her.  She  was 

176 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

very  beautiful  and  full  of  haughty  grace  that  grew  meek 
and  devoted  at  the  sight  of  him.  It  was  good  to  have  her 
in  his  arms,  cooing  her  delight  at  having  him  to  lean  on 
again,  praising  him  with  idolatrous  extravagances  whose 
excess  delighted  him  while  convincing  him  of  his  own  un- 
worthiness  of  them. 

She  had  not  taken  her  luncheon  in  the  dining-car,  and  he 
went  with  her  through  long  crypts  to  the  vasty  majesty  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Hotel,  where  they  ate  and  chattered. 
She  wanted  to  hear  all  about  his  exploits  in  France.  Every 
body  else  he  had  met  was  so  fed  up  on  military  reminiscences 
that  he  never  dared  describe  an  adventure  at  length,  and 
hardly  to  allude  to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  a  soldier  at 
all.  He  reveled  in  his  mother's  appetite  for  anecdote.  She 
seemed  to  be  convinced  that  he  had  won  the  war  single- 
handed.  She  gasped  with  terror  at  what  he  had  dared. 

He  had  been  a  good  soldier  and  he  could  afford  to  brag 
to  his  mother  with  a  childlike  ingenuousness,  because  the 
more  he  aggrandized  himself  the  more  tribute  he  paid  her 
for  mothering  him  into  the  world.  But  even  while  he  re 
counted  his  tremendous  charges  up  the  sky  and  his  incon 
ceivably  wild  descents  from  the  empyrean,  the  back  of  his 
head  was  full  of  the  bitter  truth  that  he  was  a  civilian  again 
and  that  both  his  occupation  and  his  ambition  were  gone. 

She  spoke  of  his  legacy  and  he  had  to  confess  to  the 
appalling  truth  that  half  of  it  had  melted  into  thin  air  with 
out  even  making  a  puff  of  smoke. 

"But  I'm  going  to  make  twice  as  much  with  the  half 
that  is  left,"  he  said,  "and  I've  got  to  go  to  it  right  away." 

"Oh  no!"  his  mother  moaned.  "You're  going  to  take  a 
good  long  rest  and  have  a  long,  long  visit  with  me." 

There  has  never  been  a  keener  spur  to  youthful  ambition, 
probably,  than  the  appeals  of  a  mother  who  knows  enough 
or  happens,  unwittingly,  to  beg  her  son  not  to  work  too 
hard.  All  advice  sets  up  a  sense  of  opposition,  and  parents 
who  forever  hold  the  lash  over  their  children  create  more 
balkiness  than  energy.  Mrs.  Taxter  was  altogether  sincere 
in  imploring  her  son  to  leisure,  but  the  result  was  to  inflame 
his  impatience  to  succeed.  So  now  the  impetuous  will,  the 
burning  frenzy  for  action  that  had  made  him  a  superb  war 
rior  who  forgot  his  mother  and  bantered  death,  made  him 

177 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

ruthless  toward  her  and  set  him  frantic  to  be  about  his  raid 
upon  fortune. 

When  they  had  finished  luncheon  he  called  a  taxicab  and 
gave  the  driver  the  address  of  his  aunt  Sally,  at  whose  house 
his  mother  was  to  stop.  Bob  had  not  yet  found  time  even 
to  call  there.  As  the  cab  ground  its  halting  way  up  Fifth 
Avenue,  almost  solid  with  motor-cars,  the  brief  dashes  and 
the  long  stops  threw  Bob  into  one  of  those  nerve-storms  of 
his  when  his  soul  was  like  a  sultry  sky  aching  with  suppressed 
lightning.  In  a  flash  of  impulse  he  tapped  on  the  glass  and 
told  the  driver  to  stop  at  his  bank. 

He  explained  to  his  mother  that  he  was  short  of  funds 
and  wanted  to  draw  out  a  little  cash.  He  was  a  bit  swaggery 
about  it,  and  he  returned  the  salute  of  the  tall  carriage-man 
with  a  snap.  He  started  to  write  a  check  for  fifty  dollars, 
but  his  muscles  expressed  his  obsession,  and  when  his  pen 
wrote  " Fi,"  before  he  knew,  it  had  run  into  ''Five  ihcntsand" 
instead  of  "Fifty." 

He  was  about  to  tear  up  the  check,  but  he  paused  to  con 
sider  and  was  lost.  Bob  was  one  of  those  who  do  wise  things 
on  instinct  and  unwise  on  reason.  He  did  not  tear  up  the 
check.  He  took  it  to  the  paying-teller,  who  gave  his  un 
familiar  face  a  searching  glance  and  went  to  verify  the  sig 
nature  and  the  amount  on  deposit. 

While  Bob  waited  for  the  telautograph  to  report  on  his 
account,  he  wondered  if  he  would  not  leave  for  Texas  that 
very  night — not  if  he  could  or  should,  but  if  he  would. 
Bob  was  always  wondering  what  he  would  do.  He  never 
knew  in  advance.  He  was  afraid  of  himself,  and  not  without 
excuse.  His  calmer  self,  like  a  substantial  parent,  had  often 
to  pay  the  bills  of  the  unruly  son  who  was  his  other  self. 

It  occurred  to  Bob  that  while  he  would  certainly  not  be 
going  to  Texas  to  meet  Kate  Yarmy,  of  course  he  might  run 
into  her  there.  It  would  indeed  be  his  duty  to  look  over  the 
property  of  the  Yarmys,  and  he  might  still  go  in  with  them. 

Hot  flashes  ran  through  his  scalp  as  if  his  brain  were 
ignited  with  its  own  reckless  adventurings.  He  saw  Elate 
Yarmy  in  a  highly  enhanced  vision.  He  wanted  to  be  true 
to  April  in  his  least  thought,  but  he  could  not  keep  his 
fancies  always  on  the  leash.  It  is  a  great  victory  for  a  soul 
to  be  loyal  in  its  conduct,  but  who  ever  tamed  the  imagina- 

178 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

tiou?  It  is  as  lawless  and  uncontrollable  as  a  populace  of 
bees.  To  have  the  workers  come  home  to  the  hive  of  nights 
is  as  much  as  can  be  expected.  And  they  often  sting  as 
they  toil,  or  stagger  back  drunken  with  alien  nectar  found 
beyond  the  fenced  clover-patch  of  domestic  ownership. 

At  length  the  teller  returned  and  asked  Bob  how  he  would 
have  his  money.  Bob  answered,  with  majestic  indifference, 
as  if  he  were  merely  scratching  his  account  instead  of 
canceling  it: 

"Five  ones,  please." 

As  soon  as  he  had  spoken  he  felt  an  alarm.  He  had 
drawn  out  five  other  "ones,"  and  they  had  disappeared. 
He  remembered  how  Tom  Sawyer  had  tried  to  find  a  lost 
marble  by  tossing  away  another  marble  and  saying,  "Brother, 
go  find  your  brother."  Bob  wondered  if  he  were  going  to  send 
these  bills  after  their  brothers  to  bring  them  back  or  be  lost 
with  them.  He  dared  not  change  his  order,  however,  and 
with  a  strangled  "Thank  you"  he  slid  the  balance  of  his 
wealth  across  the  glass  plate  and  tucked  it  in  the  inside  pocket 
of  his  waistcoat. 

He  was  so  alarmed  at  this  larceny  from  himself  that  he 
dared  not  confess  to  his  mother  the  conspiracy  he  was 
meditating  against  her  dreams  of  a  long  visit  with  him. 
He  spoke  of  being  awfully  busy  with  his  investment  investi 
gations;  he  said  that  he  was  "looking  into  oil,"  and  he  im 
plied  that  he  might  have  to  run  out  of  town  for  a  while  to 
make  a  personal  study  of  the  field. 

His  mother  implored  him  not  to  trouble  his  poor  brain 
till  it  was  rested  after  his  frightful  experiences  abroad;  she 
pleaded  with  him  not  to  try  to  get  rich,  and  described  the 
dismal  life  his  uncle  Randolph  Chatterson  had  led  piling 
up  the  fortune  that  he  had  never  enjoyed.  With  what  we 
like  to  call  a  "Southern"  devotion  to  life  as  a  comfort  and 
not  as  a  career,  she  said: 

"It's  your  business  as  an  heir  to  spend  your  inhe'itance, 
not  to  be  a  miser  like  your  uncle  was." 

And  this  easy  counsel,  as  usual,  stimulated  Bob  to  new 
determination.  The  duty  of  obedience  to  one's  mother  is, 
of  all  duties,  the  one  most  honored  in  the  breach  instead  of 
the  observance. 

Bob  accepted  his  aunt  Sally's  reproaches  for  his  neglect 

179 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

of  her  with  further  allusions  to  his  tremendous  plans,  and, 
unable  to  endure  the  petty  chatter  of  the  two  women,  made 
a  contemptible  excuse  for  escape : 

"I'll  leave  you  two  to  unload  your  gossip,  and  111  run 
down-town  and  attend  to  a  little  business." 

His  mother  gave  a  cry  of  protest,  but  she  could  not  hold 
him.  Seeking  any  excuse  to  be  with  him  and  to  see  where 
and  how  he  lived,  she  said  she  would  call  up  the  Summerlins 
and  ask  them  to  meet  her  at  his  hotel  as  a  half-way  house. 
He  acceded  to  this  and  hurried  to  the  Deucalion  to  think. 

The  sky  was  black  overhead  with  livid  blotches.  Gusts  of 
wind  scurried  along  the  streets  like  heralds  warning  all  good 
people  to  take  shelter,  for  a  great  rain  was  coming.  Along 
the  pavements  old  newspapers  were  skating,  and  the  carefully 
garnered  heaps  of  waste  collected  by  the  street-cleaners  were 
being  scattered  by  the  mischief  in  the  air. 

Bob  looked  up  at  the  sky  where  he  had  outflown  the  birds 
of  storm  and  felt  meek  and  shamed  as  he  hurried  along  the 
ground,  craven  before  a  threat  of  mere  raindrops.  He  could 
not  find  a  taxicab,  and  by  and  by  from  the  cloud-emplace 
ments  the  machine-guns  of  heaven  began  a  barrage  of  water- 
bullets.  Bob  turned  up  his  collar  and  ran. 


CHAPTER  V 

BY  this  time  the  ex-professor  of  vacuum-cleaning  had  in- 
!  stalled  himself  in  Bob's  two  rooms  as  a  valet,  butler, 
maid,  counselor,  dictator,  and  slave.  There  was  enough 
for  him  to  do  as  a  body-servant,  for  Bob's  effects  were  in 
utter  disarray,  and  Zeb  took  the  same  delight  in  straighten 
ing  them  that  a  mother  does  in  an  infant's  wardrobe.  Black 
hands  love  white  clothes,  and  Zeb  was  almost  matronly  in 
his  affectionate  disposition  of  Bob's  personal  linen. 

He  was  interrupted  by  the  telephone,  and  wandered  about, 
looking  for  it.  When  he  found  it  he  was  shocked  to  hear  a 
woman's  voice  that  was  not  Miss  April's.  Zeb  had  various 
kinds  of  respectfulness  to  offer,  and  he  used  one  of  the  lowest 
grades  in  answering  this  perilous  invisible  intruder  who 
answered  Zeb's  vague  "Hello!"  with  so  sweet  a  query: 

'Is  this  Mista  Taxta?" 

'No'm.    I'm  his  boy." 

'His  boy!    I  didn't  know  he  had  one." 

'I  ain't  his  son-boy — jes'  his  plain  boy-boy." 

'Oh,  I  see.    Well,  is  he  in?" 

'No'm — no'm —  I  don't  know  jes'  how  soon  he's  bein* 
back.  Shall  I  give  him  yo'  name?  No'm?  .  .  .  No'm.  .  .  . 
Yas'm!" 

He  hung  up  the  receiver  and  glared  into  the  transmitter 
as  if  he  were  trying  to  see  along  the  wire.  The  voice  had  a 
certain  familiarity.  He  shouted  at  the  telephone: 

"If  you'm  Miss  Yahmy,  you  go  'long  abote  yo'  business 
and  keep  offa  ouah  wiah." 

He  turned  away  in  a  fury.  He  caught  sight  of  himself 
in  a  cheval-glass,  and  his  anger  was  changed  to  frank  rapt 
ure.  He  imagined  himself  in  the  livery  he  had  seen  on  the 
butlers  of  his  plantation  days.  He  decided  to  go  out  at  once 
and  buy  his  "trousseau."  He  dallied  awhile  and  posed  and 
bowed  and  practised  attitudes  upon  his  understudy  in  the 
mirror,  talking  to  it  moodily  according  as  it  behaved. 

181 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"That  you,  Zeb?  Lawdy,  but  you'm  lookin'  grand."  He 
went  to  an  imaginary  door,  took  an  imaginary  card  on  an 
imaginary  tray,  and  bowed  an  imaginary  visitor  to  a  seat. 
"Howdy,  Miss  April.  You'm  lookin'  mighty  fine  these  days. 
When's  that  old  weddin'-day  comin'  'roun'?" 

Then  he  fussed  about  among  the  wedding  guests  with  all 
the  tyranny  and  pride  of  old  negro  servants  at  a  Southern 
ceremony.  Pansy,  of  course,  was  all  dressed  up  and  stand 
ing  well  to  the  fore,  and  weeping  hopelessly,  as  was  proper  to 
the  mammy  of  the  bride.  But  of  course  Zeb  was  outraged 
at  her  fears  for  Miss  April  as  the  wife  of  Masta  Bob  and  the 
special  ward  of  Uncle  Zeb.  His  vision  of  the  howling  Pansy 
as  mammy-of-honor  was  so  vivid  that  when  the  telephone 
summoned  him  from  his  prophetic  fancies  he  was  terrified 
to  hear  Pansy's  own  voice  crackling  therein: 

"Hello!    Is  Mista  Taxta  thah?" 

"No,"  Zeb  yelled.    "Who's  you?" 

"This  Pansy." 

' '  Pansy  ?    Pansy  who  ?" 

"Go  'long,  you  old  fool." 

"Oh,  now  I  knows  that  gentle  voice!" 

"Shut  up  whilst  I  tell  you  ma  messidge.  Miz  Taxta  in 
vited  ma  Miss  Ma'y  and  Miss  April  to  meet  her  there,  and 
Miss  Ma'y  say  to  say  we-all  will  be  about  half  a  houah  late." 

"I  reckon  us  Taxtas  would  expec'  that  of  you  Summalins." 
His  voice  turned  to  the  thickest  and  stickiest  of  cane-syrup 
as  he  murmured,  "Say,  Pansy  Blossom,  does  you  love  me?" 

"Don't  pesta  me,  nigga,  don't  pesta  me!" 

"That's  the  talk !  I  knowed  you  did."  He  was  still  chuck 
ling  as  he  asked,  "Has  you-all  located  them  thousand- 
dolla'  bills  yet?" 

"  No.  I  even  sifted  the  ashes  in  the  grate,  and  they  ain'1 
nowhahs." 

"I  reckon  a  angel  must  'a'  called  'em  home.  Well,  good- 
by,  Pansy  Blossom.  I'm  so  busy  I  cain't  linga  no  longa." 

"You  busy!"  Pansy  cackled,  and  cut  the  parley  short. 

As  Zeb  hung  up  the  receiver  he  heard  a  key  turning  in  the 
lock;  the  door  opened  and  his  master  entered  in  such  a 
flurry  that  when  the  door-knob  caught  in  his  pocket  he  ripped 
the  cloth  before  he  could  check  himself. 

He  swore  beautifully.  Zeb  was  amazed  and  impressed  by 

182 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

his  vocabulary.  He  was  very  sympathetic  as  he  helped  re 
move  the  torn  and  rain-drenched  coat. 

"Ain't  dat  scan'lous?  Whaffor  they  want  to  put  knobs 
on  a  do'  for?  I'll  mend  it  up  all  nice." 

Bob  scowled.    "The  patch  would  show." 

"  Not  on  me,"  Zeb  grinned.  Bob  stared  at  him,  recognizing 
the  familiar  passion  of  Zeb's  kind  for  old  suits.  "Good 
Lord!  are  you  taking  my  clothes  already?" 

Zeb  smiled.  "  That  vest  won't  be  much  good  to  you,  seein' 
the  coat's  done  rip." 

Bob  tossed  his  hands  in  despair  before  such  greed,  whipped 
off  his  waistcoat  and  handed  it  over.  "Anything  else  you 
want?" 

Bob  darted  into  his  bedroom  and  began  to  empty  his 
trousers  pockets  there. 

Zeb  followed  to  inquire,  "What  suit  you  allowm'  to  put 
on  in  place  of  them  pants  of  mine  you're  wearin'?" 

"The  blue  serge." 

"I'll  git  it  out."  As  he  crossed  to  the  clothes-closet,  Bob 
gave  a  start  and  a  cry,  ran  to  him,  and  felt  in  the  inside  pocket 
of  the  waistcoat  on  Zeb's  arm.  He  took  thence  five  thousand 
dollars  and  verified  them  before  Zeb's  popping  eyes.  Zeb 
stared  at  the  vacuum-cleaner  in  the  corner  and  wondered 
if  it  were  bewitched.  He  stammered: 

"You's  found  the  los'  money?" 

"No,  this  is  another  five  thousand  I  just  drew  out  of  the 
bank." 

Zeb  fairly  groaned  with  relief.  Bob  asked,  "Has  anybody 
telephoned  about  the  other  five?" 

Zeb  gave  him  Pansy's  message  and  her  information  that 
the  money  was  not  yet  found.  He  forgot  to  mention  the 
visit  of  the  Summerlins  or  the  anonymous  caller  on  the 
telephone. 

Bob  mused  aloud:  "Where  in  God's  name  could  that 
money  have  gone?  Five  thousand  dollars!  And  they  just 
went — whiff!  Nobody  was  near  them;  yet  away  they  flew. 
It's  uncanny.  I  haven't  an  idea  who  took  it,  have  you?" 

Zeb  folded  the  torn  coat  with  shivering  hands  as  he 
confessed,  "Well,  I — I  has  an  idy." 

"You  have  an  idea?  You  don't  suspect  the  Yarmys,  do 
you?" 

13  183 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"No,  that's  about  the  onliest  thing  on  earth  I  wouldn't 
accuse  'em  of." 

"Who  then?" 

Zeb  wished  that  he  could  change  the  subject.  He  said, 
"Well,  I — I  get  an  idy  it  was  snagged  by  somebody  what 
loves  you." 

"You  don't  rnsan  Miss  April?"  Bob  cried. 

"I  ain't  namin'  no  names,"  Zeb  protested,  aghast  at  the 
complexity  of  his  position. 

Bob  laughed  at  him.  "Of  course  she  was  determined  to 
prevent  my  going  to  Texas,  but — oh,  I  couldn't  suspect  her!" 

"Ef  I  was  you,  Masta  Bob,  I  wouldn't  suspect  nobody. 
I'd  jest  wait.  It  11  pop  up  some  day  you  least  suspect  it." 

"But  I  need  it  now,  damn  it.  It  puts  a  crimp  in  all  my 
plans.  Now  I  have  to  go  to  Texas  with  only  half  the  chance 
I  had." 

"You  has  to  go  to  Texas?"  Zeb  howled,  in  a  frenzy  of 
alarm. 

"Yes,  and  I  may  go  any  minute." 

Zeb  was  desperate  enough  to  offer  a  prayer.  "If  you  ask 
my  advice,  you'll  marry  Miss  April  and  take  us  all  back 
home." 

"Marry  Miss  April!"  Bob  laughed  softly  and  bitterly  as 
he  gazed  at  the  engagement-ring  April  had  returned  to  him. 
He  had  taken  it  from  his  pocket  and  tossed  it  on  the  bureau 
with  the  wad  of  bills. 

"Ain't  you  goin'  to  marry  Miss  April?"  Zeb  whispered, 
in  horror. 

"No,  but  I'm  goin'  to  fire  you  if  you're  not  careful.  Did 
I  hire  you  as  a  lawyer  or  a  valet?" 

"Valet — valet!"  Zeb  gasped.  "You  betta  stand  out  of 
them  damp  pants  befo'  you  ketches  cold  in  the  laigs." 

He  found  the  blue-serge  trousers,  and  Bob  changed  to 
them  while  Zeb  stood  regarding  the  five  thousand  dollars 
on  the  bureau.  He  was  tempted  to  seize  this  wealth  also 
and  cache  it  till  Bob  changed  his  mind  about  Texas.  When 
the  telephone  rang,  and  Bob  pocketed  the  money  and  went 
into  his  drawing-room  to  answer  it,  Zeb  was  almost  distraught 
with  temptation  to  follow  and  take  it  from  him.  The  only 
thing  that  checked  his  rashness  was  the  memory  of  the  tort 
ure  the  first  five  thousand  had  given,  and  still  gave,  him. 

184 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

From  the  telephone  Bob  received  a  message  that  amazed 
him.  The  hotel  central  sang  out: 

"Say,  lieutenant,  your  sister  is  on  the  way  up." 

"My  what?" 

"She  said  she  was  your  sister,"  the  central  answered,  with 
a  tone  of  sophisticated  skepticism  in  her  voice. 

"You  must  mean  my  mother,"  Bob  said. 

"She  didn't  look  like  anybody's  mother,"  the  central 
taunted,  and  went  about  her  other  chores. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BOB  stood  wondering.  His  first  thought  was  of  April. 
But  she  would  never  come  up  alone  to  a  man's  room  in 
a  hotel.  She  would  never  think  of  pretending  to  be  a  sister 
in  order  to  get  past  the  guardians  of  that  hostelry's  easy 
morals. 

A  rush  of  wind  from  the  increasing  storm  outside  banged 
the  door  between  his  bedroom  and  his  living-room.  It  was 
followed  by  a  soft  knock  on  the  door.  He  called  out, 
"Come!"  from  where  he  stood. 

The  door  opened  slowly  and,  as  it  were,  slyly,  and  Kate 
Yarmy  slipped  into  the  room,  closed  the  door  behind  her,  and 
stood  smiling  at  him  questioningly  and  with  a  look  of  light 
challenge. 

She  was  as  beautiful  against  the  dull  brown  of  the  door 
as  if  a  sudden  angel  stood  there  in  golden  apparition.  Her 
face  had  the  wind-blown,  rain-blessed  glow  of  a  ripe  peach, 
and  her  eyes  had  the  daring  gaiety  of  a  young  vixen  whose 
motives  are  ambiguous  between  innocence  and  intrigue. 

Bob  stared  at  her  in  speechless  admiration,  fear,  and  curi 
osity.  He  could  not  speak  till  she  unlocked  her  lips  with  the 
word  we  use  so  incessantly  and  with  such  variety  of  content, 
"Well?" 

Then  all  he  could  think  of  was  a  stupid,  "Why,  it's  Miss 
Yarmy!" 

She  made  a  feint  at  turning  away.  "Of  co'se,  if  you  were 
expectin'  somebody  else — " 

"No,  no.  I'm  not  expecting  anybody — except  my  mother 
and  some  other  people — later." 

"Your  motha?    Oh,  then  ladies  do  visit  you  here?" 

"Not  alone — that  is — not  ladies  like  you — young  and 
beauti — "  / 

"Go  on,"  she  teased. 

"Beautiful!"  he  finished,  uncomfortably. 

"I  was  afraid  you  were  goin*  to  rob  me  of  that,"  she 

r  86 


HONOR   COMES  IN 

laughed,  still  nailed  to  the  door  whence  he  did  not  dare  invite 
her  to  advance,  especially  as  he  suddenly  realized  that  he 
was  standing  before  her  without  coat  or  waistcoat. 

To  a  man  of  his  habit,  an  inappropriate  costume  was 
equivalent  to  a  nakedness,  and  he  felt  exactly  the  same 
emotions  and  fugacity.  His  distress  was  apparent,  but  Kate 
misjudged  its  origin. 

She  pouted  most  fetchingly: 

"  I  reckon  I  did  ve'y  wrong  to  come." 

"Not  wrong,"  Bob  protested,  "but— well— " 

"I  thought  the  elevata-boy  looked  at  me  in  a  funny  way. 
But  we  Texas  girls  are  used  to  goin'  anywheah,  you  know. 
I'm  newa  quite  suah  of  maself  up  Nawth,  and  I'm  always 
gettin'  into  trouble.  My  brotha  shot  a  man  once  for  mis- 
intuppretin'." 

"Shot  a  man!"  Bob  gasped. 

"He  was  a  horrid  old  beast,  anyway.  Besides,  my  brotha 
hasn't  the  faintest  idea  I  am  heah.  He'd  kill  me  if  he  had, 
I  reckon — and  take  a  shot  at  you,  maybe.  But  I — well, 
I  just  couldn't  he'p  comin'.  I'm  leavin'  taown  to-night." 

This  whole  budget  of  information  was  staggering  in  several 
ways  to  Bob.  But  he  could  not  reveal  his  uneasiness.  It 
was  like  him,  when  he  should  have  said,  "Go  away  at  once!" 
to  say,  "Won't  you  sit  down?" 

Kate  moved  forward  to  a  chair  with  a  leopard-like  lissome- 
ness  of  peculiar  grace  and  omen.  The  way  she  disposed  her 
limbs  in  the  chair  was  oddly  interesting.  She  was  very  round, 
and  it  was  pleasantly  manifest  that  she  had  the  use  of  all 
her  joints. 

Bob  said,  "If  you'll  pardon  me  one  minute,  I'll  put  on  my 
coat." 

But  he  had  to  wait  to  hear  her  when  she  ignored  this 
remark  and  said,  "I  was  wonderin*  if  you-all  had  found 
the  lost  money  yet." 

"Not  a  trace  of  it." 

"That's  just  tew  bad.  And  it  was  all  you  had,  you  poor 
boy?" 

Bob  defended  himself  from  the  "poor"  by  remarking, 
"Well,  I  have  five  thousand  left." 

"Oh,  I  am  glad!"  said  Kate.  "It  would  break  my  heart 
to  have  you  lose  everything  on  our  account." 

187 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD .  COMING  , 

"It  wasn't  your  fault  at  all,  but — if  you'll  let  me  get  my 
coat." 

"Please  don't  botha!  Tin  used  to  men  in  shirt-sleeves. 
Joe  newa  wears  a  coat  in  Texas.  I'm  goin'  to  take  off  my 
hat,  if  you  don't  mind.  It  got  almost  torn  off  ma  head  in 
that  awful  rain-stawm.  Most  of  my  hair-pins  went  with  it." 

Bob  stood  watching  the  swift,  deft  motions  of  her  graceful 
arms,  realizing  cloudily  what  an  art  women  make  of  putting 
on  or  taking  off  a  hat.  It  is  as  if  their  arms  performed  a 
solemn  dance  about  their  heads. 

Kate  lifted  away  the  heap  of  colored  straws  and  feathers 
and  ribbons  and  skewered  it  to  the  back  of  the  chair  with 
a  long  hat-pin. 

Then  she  began  tossing  her  radiant  hair  about  with  her 
fingers,  complaining,  "My  hair  is  a  sight!" 

"A  beautiful  sight!"  Bob  sighed. 

"Oh,  you  Virginians!"  she  gurgled,  twisting  in  the  chair 
to  peer  at  him  around  the  edge  of  it  and,  as  it  were,  pouring 
her  gracious  upper  body  across  the  ledge  of  the  arm  of  it. 
"You  Virginians  aren't  afraid  to  tell  a  woman  the  pretty 
things  she's  achin'  to  hear,  are  you?" 

"Aren't  we?"  said  Bob.  "I  can  tell  you  a  lot  more  if  you'll 
let  me  get  into  a  coat." 

Kate  laughed  and  nodded  her  consent.  He  went  to  the 
door  and  called  to  Zeb  to  bring  his  coat. 

Kate  leaped  to  her  feet  and  fluttered.  "Oh,  is  some  one 
else  here?" 

"Only  my  black  man." 

"I  knew  I  shouldn't  have  come!" 

Zeb  appeared  at  the  door  with  the  blue-serge  coat  and 
waistcoat  ready  for  Bob's  arms.  He  peered  round  Bob's 
shoulder  as  they  struggled  into  place.  The  look  he  gave  Kate 
was  frankly  hostile.  She  answered  it  in  kind. 

Bob  turned  his  back  on  Kate  while  he  buttoned  his  waist 
coat.  This  was  another  of  the  subtleties  of  modesty.  When 
he  turned  round  he  made  sure  that  the  inner  door  was  open — 
as  a  protection  to  Kate. 

She  lowered  her  voice  as  Bob  took  a  chair  in  front  of  her. 
Also  she  sat  more  erect  and  drew  down  her  skirts — with  that 
quaint  way  many  women  have  of  lifting  them  a  little  higher 
before  they  shake  them  down — the  same  mystic  habit  that 

188 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

leads  them  to  wear  gowns  cut  very  low  and  then  to  keep  their 
hands  fluttering  about  for  concealment. 

"You  must  think  I'm  puffectly  crazy,"  she  said. 

"You're  perfectly  charming,"  said  Bob. 

"You're  mighty  nice  to  say  so,  anyway,"  she  beamed. 
"But  you  see,  when  we  left  the  home  of  Miss  Summalin — 
isn't  she  a  dolling  girl,  a  puffect  dolling — Joe  found  at  ouah 
hotel  a  telegram  saying  we  must  go  back  to  Texas  at  once 
— to-night.  Somebody's  disputin'  ouah  title  to  ouah  own 
home.  We've  got  to  go  back  and  fight  for  it." 

Bob  was  so  instant  and  sincere  with  his  regrets  that  she 
was  encouraged  to  go  on: 

"I  just  couldn't  leave  without  tellin'  you  good-by.  I  wish 
you  could  have  gone  into  pawtnaship,  because — because — 
oh,  I  like  you  mighty  much.  I  oughtn't  to  say  it,  but  I  can't 
he'p  tellin'  you." 

She  put  out  her  hand  in  appeal.  He  took  it  and  pressed  it. 
It  hurt  him  like  the  drawing  of  an  arrow  out  of  a  wound  when 
she  took  it  from  his  clasp,  and  his  blood  seemed  to  go  out 
after  it. 

"I  just  dashed  ova  here  and  I  got  blown  to  pieces.  My 
hair— -don't  look  at  me." 

"  I  can't  keep  my  eyes  off  you,"  said  Bob,  rushing  into  the 
opportunity  for  praise  that  she  opened,  as  the  air  pursues 
and  closes  about  a  fleeing  object.  Courtesy  also  abhors 
vacuums,  and  canny  women  are  always  establishing  them 
for  polite  men  to  fill  with  compliments.  In  Bob's  part  of 
the  country,  not  to  praise  a  woman  when  the  occasion  offers 
is  to  insult  her.  His  heart  was  suddenly  blooming  with 
bouquets  of  flattery  to  offer  this  strange  creature  who  wel 
comed  them  so  well. 

With  an  abrupt  impatience  and  a  very  pretty  show  of 
temper  she  tore  down  the  structure  of  her  hair  and  let  it 
stream  about  her  shoulders.  In  Spain  women  are  forbidden 
to  go  to  church  with  their  hair  uncovered.  In  Turkey  the 
revelation  of  a  woman's  tresses  is  a  terrible  thing,  or  was 
until  the  war  tore  the  yashmak  from  the  face, of  the  Turkish 
woman  and  sent  her  into  the  munition-factories  and  thence 
into  modern  times. 

Bob's  heart  was  losing  itself  in  that  poetic  madness  of 
Kate's  locks.  But  her  words  were  prosaic  enough. 

189 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Do  you  happen  to  have  a  few  hair-pins?" 

He  laughed  with  shivering  jaws.   "I  don't  use  them." 

"What  shall  I  do?  I've  got  to  get  out  of  here  and  6o  back 
to  Joe  and — maybe  your  man  would  go  and  get  me  some 
hair-pins." 

Bob  was  either  too  innocent  to  realize  that  Zeb's  depart 
ure  would  leave  them  entirely  unchaperoned,  or  desperate 
enough  to  wish  him  gone.  In  any  case,  he  called  Zeb  to  him. 

"Yassa!"  Zeb  answered  at  the  door  with  a  startling 
promptitude  that  proved  he  had  not  gone  far  away. 

Bob  said,  "About  a  block  down  the  street  is  a  little  notion- 
store — " 

"Does  you  want  some  little  notions?"  he  queried,  im 
pudently. 

Bob  was  cold.   "Go  there  and  get  a  package  of  hair-pins." 

"  I  reckon  one  of  them  chambamaids  has  'em.    I'll  ring." 

Kate  answered  smartly,  "I  don't  care  to  borrow  hair-pins 
from  a  chambermaid,  if  you  don't  mind." 

"Certainly  not!"  said  Bob — and  to  Zeb:  "Do  as  you're 
told.  Here's  the  money." 

Bob's  hand  dived  into  his  pocket  and  pulled  up,  with  a 
heap  of  change,  the  bills.  Kate's  eyes  widened,  but  she  said 
nothing.  But  Zeb  did.  He  took  his  life  in  his  hands  and 
ventured  a  fearful  impertinence. 

"Betta  hadn't  you  leave  that  money  in  the  safe  down 
stairs?" 

Bob  scowled  and  muttered,  "Get  along!" 

Zeb  went  into  the  hall  by  the  bedroom  door.  He  was 
defeated  and  afraid. 


CHAPTER  VII 

AS  soon  as  Zeb  had  gone  Kate  grew  more  comfortable, 
/\  and  rose  to  ask : 

"While  we're  waiting  for  the  hair-pins,  could  you  lend  me 
a  comb  and  a  brush?" 

"Certainly!"  said  Bob,  hastening  into  his  bedroom.  As 
he  turned  from  the  bureau  he  saw  her  standing  at  the  door 
with  a  childlike  curiosity. 

"May  I  have  a  peek?  So  this  is  where  you  live?  Would 
you  mind  if  I  used  your  mirror  there?" 

Bob  was  in  a  state  of  foolish  terror.  He  could  not  possibly 
remind  her  that  there  was  a  mirror  over  the  mantel  in  the 
living-room.  He  stepped  aside  as  she  marched  to  the  bureau 
and  began  to  comb  and  brush  and  braid  and  coil  her  plentiful 
tresses  into  the  mystery  of  a  coiffure. 

Two  natures  struggled  bitterly  in  Bob's  heart.  One  of 
them  pleaded  with  him:  "Get  you  gone  to  a  distance  from 
this  temptation.  Turn  your  eyes  from  her  beauty  and  your 
feet  from  her  neighborhood.  Save  her  from  her  own  guile- 
lessness  or  from  her  own  guile.  Beware  of  entangling  al 
liances!"  The  other  spirit  raged  at  him:  " Don't  be  a  white- 
blooded  ninny.  Take  her  in  your  arms.  That's  what  she's 
here  for.  She'll  despise  you  if  you  don't,  and  you'll  despise 
yourself  if  you  let  her  go.  What  are  you — a  man  or  a 
clam?" 

He  was  actually  quivering  with  the  wrestling-match,  but 
neither  warrior  for  his  soul  could  quite  prevail. 

Kate  parted  the  curtains  of  her  hair  to  peer  out  at  him 
with  twinkling  eyes  and  to  murmur,  with  a  frightful  child 
ishness  : 

"Aren't  we  getting  well  acquainted?" 

"Aren't  we?" 

She  gathered  her  hair  about  her  head  and  made  a  rope  of 
its  length  and  laid  it  across  one  shoulder,  while  she  noted 

191 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

that  she  had  a  few  flowers  at  her  bosom.  She  broke  one  rose 
from  the  cluster  and  said: 

"I  wish  you  would  come  to  Texas  some  time.  We  have 
roses  like  this  in  the  dead  of  winter,  and  magnolias  like 
bowls  of  alabasta.  Will  you  wear  this  for  me — as  a  little 
remembrance — of  a  foolish  girl?" 

She  drew  close  to  him,  while  he  stood  like  a  statue — a 
statue  of  new  bronze  only  whose  surface  was  established  and 
within  all  one  core  of  fire.  She  put  her  hands  to  the  lapel 
of  his  coat  and  tucked  the  stem  of  a  rose  in  the  buttonhole. 
It  seemed  to  thrust  down  into  his  heart.  The  savor  of  her 
hair  was  drugging  the  gentler  warrior  that  pleaded  with  him 
very  faintly  now  to  have  mercy  on  himself  and  on  this 
woman  equally  in  peril,  whether  through  ignorance  or  wile. 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  a  smile  like  the  swift  blooming 
of  a  human  rose.  Still  he  could  not  put  out  his  hand  to 
touch  her  or  set  his  lips  against  hers. 

After  an  eternity  of  a  moment  she  moaned,  "I  think  I 
am  going  to  faint." 

She  clutched  at  the  throat  of  her  gown  and  tore  it  open  a 
little,  and  toppled  against  him.  Now  he  had  to  take  her  in 
his  arms  and  help  her  to  a  chair.  And  then  he  could  no 
more  take  his  arms  from  her  than  he  could  put  them  around 
her  before.  Yet  her  helplessness  protected  her  from  him — 
and  him  from  her  beauty. 

While  he  hovered  irresolute  he  heard  a  knocking  at  the 
door  in  the  other  room. 

Kate  heard  it,  too.  She  opened  her  eyes  and  whispered, 
"Oh,  my  God,  if  it  should  be  my  brotha!" 

Bob  thought  of  a  more  horrible  confrontation  and  whis 
pered,  "Or  my  mother!" 

Kate  clutched  at  his  hands  and  shuddered.  "Oh,  why  did 
I  ever  come  ?  If  it's  Joe,  he'll  kill  us  both !"  She  began  to  sob. 

Her  terror  furnished  Bob  a  little  courage.  "Better  be  as 
quiet  as  you  can — till  I  get  rid  of — whoever  it  is." 

Bob  went  staggering  into  the  living-room,  closing  the  door 
back  of  him  very  softly.  He  was  laboring  over  a  smile  for 
his  mother,  and  feeling  dog-sick  at  the  necessity  for  hypocrisy 
before  her. 

All  the  mad  sweetness  of  the  adventure  with  the  pretty 
girl  turned  to  a  loathsome  dust  and  ashes.  Now  he  saw  in 

192 


BOB    W.\S   IN   A   STATE   OF   FOOLISH   TERROR 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

the  cruel  light  of  decency  the  old  but  indomitable  truism 
that  Kate  was  what  every  girl  is  likely  to  be — somebody's 
sister  now  and  somebody's  mother  in  some  future  day. 
He  hated  himself  for  the  necessary  hypocrisy  that  forced 
him  to  assume  a  careless  tone  as  he  called,  "Come  in!" 

The  door  swung  back  and  Joe  Yarmy  lurched  in.  There 
was  an  ugly  set  to  his  jaws,  a  light  in  his  eyes  like  the  glint 
from  a  revolver  barrel. 

Bob's  uneasy  glance  caught  a  glimpse  of  Kate's  hat  pinned 
to  the  chair. 

Joe  Yarmy  said,  "I'm  lookin'  for  ma  sista." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"HPELL  the  truth  and  shame  the  devil"  is  noble  advice; 

1  "Tell  the  truth  and  shame  a  woman"  is  not  so 
handsome. 

Virtues  are  always  at  war  with  one  another,  and  there  is 
no  league  of  nations  where  their  disputes  can  be  settled;  and 
if  there  were  there  would  be  no  time  to  wait,  for  we  must 
constantly  act  first  and  think  afterward.  The  swift  and  beau 
tiful  instincts  of  loyalty  and  chivalry  have  no  worse  enemy 
than  the  beautiful  but  deliberate  habit  of  truth. 

Let  moralists  storm  as  they  will,  they  will  never  make  it 
pretty  for  a  person  to  be  willing  to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth  about  his  family,  his  coun 
try,  his  religion,  womankind,  his  guest,  the  strangers  within 
his  gates,  or  a  number  of  other  people  and  things  for  which 
he  must  be  willing  to  lay  down  not  only  his  life  and  his 
treasure,  but  also  his  veracity. 

The  truth  about  the  truth  is  rarely  considered.  Of  course, 
the  truth  about  scientific,  historical,  or  religious  facts  ought 
to  be  sacred  and  forever  besought;  but  it  isn't. 

Prof.  Goldwin  Smith  published  a  disturbing  essay  in  which 
he  quoted  some  very  searching  inquiries  into  the  singular 
prestige  that  truth  has  among  men  as  a  moral  power.  It 
is  rarely  spoken,  but  always  well  spoken  of.  Some  of  the 
loudest  worshipers  of  it  are  the  most  hostile  foes  it  has  and 
the  rarest  users  of  it.  Even  scientific  and  historical  truth 
is  offensive  or  boresome  to  the  huge  majority,  of  course. 
Vast  numbers  of  people  do  not  want  to  know  the  truth  even 
for  private  information. 

The  manipulation  of  social  truth  is  the  test  of  discretion, 
breeding,  and  political  acumen.  Kant  says  that  "a  lie  is 
an  abandonment,  or,  as  it  were,  annihilation  of  the  dignity 
of  man."  And  yet  there  are  many  occasions  when  the  telling 
of  the  truth  is  the  least  dignified  of  actions.  From  childhood 

194 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

on  we  despise  the  tattle-tale,  and  the  tattle-tale  is  most 
despised  when  he  tells  an  unpleasant  truth. 

To  tell  the  truth,  Bob  Taxter  never  for  a  moment  hesi 
tated  about  telling  a  lie  in  the  situation  that  was  thrown 
about  him  like  a  net  from  an  invisible  hand.  And  he  was  a 
man  that  hated  a  lie  like  poison. 

What  else  could  he  decently  or  sensibly  do? 

A  young  man  suddenly  finds  his  hotel  rooms  invaded  by 
a  personable  young  woman  whom  he  likes  and  believes  to 
be  a  good  woman.  She  overwhelms  him  by  frankly  declaring 
that  she  cares  for  him  too  deeply  to  leave  him  without 
telling  him  how  deeply  she  cares  for  him.  She  ingenuously 
takes  off  her  rain-drenched  hat  and  pins  it  to  a  chair.  Then 
she  goes  into  the  adjoining  room  and  proceeds  to  readjust 
her  wind-blown  locks. 

It  was  inconceivable  that  Bob  should  turn  her  out  of  his 
rooms.  Even  poor  Joseph  won  little  glory  for  fleeing  even 
from  the  outrageous  wife  of  his  benefactor. 

What  could  poor  Bob  do,  who  was  no  Joseph? 

He  could  only  suffer  in  silence  the  exquisite  anguishes 
any  polite  man  endures  in  the  presence  of  a  demonstrative 
woman  heedless  of  appearances  or  conventions. 

He  believed  her  innocent.  He  could  only  stand  by  and 
hope  that  nobody  would  burst  in  and  suspect. 

And  then  he  heard  a  knock  on  the  door.  He  stepped  into 
the  next  room  to  protect  the  girl's  good  name. 

He  felt  very  miserable  when  he  saw  that  the  intruder  was 
her  brother  and  that  he  was  in  a  surly  humor.  Bob  went 
utterly  forlorn  when  he  noted  that  Kate's  hat  was  pinned 
to  a  chair  in  plain  view  of  a  side  glance. 

But  he  never  doubted  for  an  instant  that  it  was  his  whole 
duty  as  a  man  and  a  gentleman  to  surround  the  truth  of  the 
girl's  indiscretion  with  a  stockade  of  lies. 

The  fact  that  the  odds  seemed  against  him  only  made  it 
feel  more  cowardly  to  surrender  the  girl's  reputation  without 
a  struggle. 

If  he  got  killed — well,  he  had  been  an  aviator  in  France 
for  a  year.  The  fear  of  death  had  been  the  first  thing  he  had 
left  at  home  with  his  civilian  clothes.  Cowardice  was  the 
supreme  sin  for  a  soldier. 

The  moral  code  of  the  modern  soldier  was  a  matter  of 

195 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

earnest  study  to  everybody  concerned  in  the  war  ."'One 'of 
the  chaplains,  Percy  T.  Edrop,  wrote  of  an  investigation 
made  by  the  evangelists,  Fred  B.  Smith  and  Dr.  Elmer  T. 
Clark,  who  sent  out  cards  asking  what  the  soldiers  considered 
"the  most  repulsive  sins." 

Mr.  Smith's  answers  established  them  as:  i — Cowardice; 
2  —  Selfishness ;  3  —  Stinginess ;  4  —  Boastfulness.  Doctor 
Clark's  answers  indicated  five:  i — Cowardice;  2 — Selfish 
ness;  3 — Hypocrisy;  4 — Disloyalty;  5 — Meanness. 

That  makes  Seven  Ugly  Sins,  all  told. 

Not  one  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  got  into  either  list. 
Not  one  of  the  mortal  or  venial  sins  of  the  Catholic  doctrine. 
Not  one  of  the  Ten  Commandments  of  Israel. 

Doctor  Clark  moralized  upon  the  code  of  the  soldiers  as 
follows : 

"They  displayed  a  greater  profundity,  a  better  grasp  of  the 
fundamentals  of  the  moral  life,  than  any  of  the  professional 
moralists  who  had  presumed  to  lecture  them." 

And  Mr.  Smith  said: 

"I  have  come  to  believe  that  it  is  a  fundamentally  sound 
code.  I  for  one  am  perfectly  willing  to  get  out  and  preach 
it.  And  I  believe  that  our  churches  will  have  to  take  it  into 
consideration  in  the  future.  We  have  laid  too  much  stress 
on  the  old  surface  things,  the  old  'taboo'  acts — dancing,  card- 
playing,  swearing,  and  so  on.  We  have  got  to  follow  those 
boys  down  to  the  deeper  things  which  are  fundamental — 
courage,  unselfishness,  generosity,  and  humanity.  When 
you  come  right  down  to  it,  those  are  the  very  lessons  which 
the  Great  Teacher  Himself  tried  to  set  before  the  world." 

Bob  Taxter  acted  on  instinct,  and  instinct  is  an  equation 
of  infinite,  complex  factors.  To  have  told  the  truth  would 
have  seemed  to  him  to  have  violated  all  of  the  Seven  Com 
mandments  of  1919.  It  would  have  been  an  act  of  cowardice, 
selfishness,  stinginess,  boastfulness,  hypocrisy,  disloyalty, 
and  meanness. 

So  Bob  lied  like  a  soldier  and  a  knight. 

But  truth,  however  hideous  at  times,  is  sometimes  mighty, 

196 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

and  occasionally  prevails.  Now  and  then  it  takes  the  most 
cruel  revenges  on  those  who  tamper  with  it.  And  this  was 
one  of  the  times. 

Bob  lied  in  vain. 

When  Joe  Yarmy  said  to  him,  "I'm  lookin'  for  ma  sista," 
Bob,  sparring  for  breath,  stupidly  mumbled: 

"Your  sister?" 

"Yes,  ma  sista!"  stormed  Joe.    "Is  she  here?" 

' '  Here  ?    Why  should  she  be  here  ?' ' 

"I  don't  ask  you  why  she  should,  because  she  shouldn't! 
I  ask  you,  is  she?" 

Then  Bob  handed  out  the  feeble  lie:  "Of  course  not!" 
He  could  not  let  ill  enough  alone.  He  tried  to  argue  about 
it.  "What  on  earth  should  bring  her  here?" 

"She's  crazy  about  you,"  Joe  growled.  "She  don't  under 
stand  these  city  ways.  She  comes  from  Gawd's  country. 
You  been  triflin'  with  her  affections,  I  reckon.  And  if  you 
have,  I —  Why,  I'd  kill  a  man  who  fooled  with  her." 

"Quite  right!"  said  Bob;  "quite  right!"  The  duplication 
did  not  strengthen  the  comment.  A  child  could  have  seen 
that  Bob  was  ill  at  ease.  Joe  glared  past  him. 

"Why  are  you  standin'  in  front  that  do'?  Is  she  in  that 
room?" 

"There's  nobody  in  there,"  said  Bob,  in  a  cold  sweat  of 
rage  at  having  to  take  Yarmy's  insolent  suspicions.  He 
clenched  his  hands  back  of  him  to  keep  them  from  flying  at 
Yarmy's  face. 

At  that  moment  both  he  and  Joe  heard  a  movement  in 
the  other  room.  It  was  Zeb,  who  entered  there  from  the  hall 
with  a  small  package  of  hair-pins  and  startled  Kate  as  much 
as  he  startled  Bob. 

Joe  stepped  forward  with  new  menace.  "What's  that?" 
he  demanded. 

"That?"  Bob  stammered.  "Wh-why,  why,  that  must  be 
my  man — my  man  Zeb.  He — he  went  out.  He  must  have 
come  back." 

Instantly  Bob  saw  that  he  had  only  emphasized  the  awk 
wardness  of  the  situation,  for  Joe  sneered:  "Oh,  he's  been 
out,  eh?  You  sent  him  out,  I  reckon." 

"Yes— no— that  is—" 

"Well!" 

197 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"For  some — some  tobacco.  I  sent  him  out  for  some 
tobacco." 

"Agh!    I  don't  believe  there's  a  man  in  there  at  all." 

Bob  took  a  chance  and  raised  his  voice.  "Zeb!  Oh,  Zeb, 
come  here." 

When  Zeb  put  his  head  in  to  say  "Yassa!"  the  door  struck 
Bob  in  the  back.  Without  turning  Bob  said,  and  pulled  a 
graveyard  smile: 

"Mr.  Yarmy  thought  you  were  his  sister." 

"No,  sah.    I  ain't,"  said  Zeb. 

"That's  all,"  said  Bob,  and  Zeb  withdrew,  his  eyes  bulging. 
He  turned  them  on  Kate  and  he  would  have  taken  great 
pleasure  in  murdering  her  for  the  humiliation  he  saw  his 
master  subjected  to.  But  he  stayed  by  the  door  to  hear 
what  followed.  He  heard  Joe  say: 

"I  reckon  I  made  a  mistake.    I  apologize." 

He  heard  Bob  answer,  with  a  sudden  return  of  dignity, 
"You'd  better  apologize  to  your  sister  when  you  see  her." 

Joe  was  meek  now.  ' '  I  will.  She's  the  best  girl  in  the  world, 
but  she's  a  little  too  trusting."  Then  there  was  a  tense  hush 
and  then  a  ferocious  snarl  from  Joe:  "What's  this?  It's  her 
hat!  She's  here,  after  all.  She's  in  there.  Get  out  of  ma 
way!" 

Bob's  answer  was  a  resolute  "No!"  Joe's  a  loud  "I'll  kill 
you  for  this!" 


CHAPTER  IX 

'"PHE  horrified  Zeb  was  roughly  brushed  aside  as  Kate 
1  darted  wildly  past  him  into  the  other  room.    She  flung 
herself  in  front  of  Bob  and  pleaded: 

"No,  no!  I'm  here.  But  don't  harm  him,  Joe.  It's  my 
fault." 

Zeb,  staring  after  her,  saw  Joe  recoil  from  her.  "Don't 
touch  me!  Good  God!  How  could  you  come  here?" 

"I  loved  him." 

Joe  ignored  her  and  turned  the  flood  of  his  wrath  on  Bob. 
"  Wha'  d'  I  tell  you?  You  led  her  on,  you—" 

Zeb  did  not  hear  the  incoherent  words  that  followed.  He 
was  running  about  frantically,  searching  for  some  weapon 
of  defense  for  his  master.  He  fumbled  at  the  bureau;  picked 
up  a  hairbrush ;  flung  it  down ;  a  little  pair  of  manicure  scis 
sors;  tossed  them  aside;  clutched  instinctively  at  a  razor; 
saw  with  disgust  that  it  was  a  safety  razor — a  safety  razor 
at  such  a  time ! 

He  jerked  open  the  upper  drawer.  There  lay  a  big  pistol 
— a  beautiful  black  automatic  .45,  the  sweet,  swift  gun  Bob 
had  carried  in  the  war. 

Zeb  would  gladly  have  emptied  it  into  Mr.  Yarmy,  but 
what  did  he  know  about  machinery?  There  was  a  safety 
catch,  and  a  sleeve  to  draw  back  to  engage  the  first  cartridge. 
Besides,  Bob  stood  between  him  and  the  bull's-eye. 

So  he  tiptoed  forward  to  the  open  door  and  laid  it  gently 
in  the  upward  palm  of  Bob's  right  hand,  which  his  left  was 
holding  in  fierce  restraint. 

It  did  Zeb's  heart  good  to  see  Bob's  fingers  close  about 
the  grip  with  a  loving  welcome.  He  backed  away  unnoticed 
by  Joe  Yarmy,  who  was  weeping  in  a  murderous  insanity. 

Zeb  heard  Bob  still  trying  to  parley  for  Kate's  repute: 

"I  assure  you,  Mr.  Yarmy,  your  sister  is  innocent  of  any 
wrong.    I  give  you  my  word  of  honor." 
14  199 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Your  word!"  Joe  laughed.  "Your  honor!  Didn't  you 
tell  me  she  wasn't  here  and  you  hadn't  seen  her?  Didn't 
you?" 

"I  was  afraid  you  would  misunderstand,"  Bob  pleaded. 

"Well,  even  if  I  was  fool  enough  not  to,  who  else  would  be?" 

"Nobody  else  knows." 

"Nobody  else!  Ha!  The  elevator-boy  knows,  don't  he? 
The  clerk  down-stairs  knows,  don't  he?  And  who  was  it 
put  me  wise  to  this  but  ma  friend  from  Texas?  He  saw  her 
come  in  here.  He'll  spread  it  all  over  Texas.  She'll  newa 
be  able  to  hold  up  her  head  again — and  neither  will  I.  I 
ought  to  kill  her.  I  ought  to  kill  you  both — and  by  God, 
I  will!" 

He  snatched  an  automatic  from  a  shoulder-holster  under 
his  coat,  but  Bob  had  whipped  his  own  weapon  forward  and 
covered  him  before  he  could  aim  his  gun. 

"Drop  it!"  Bob  thundered  with  a  voice  used  to  military 
command. 

The  pistol  thudded  the  rug  as  Joe  fell  backward  in  terror 
and  knocked  a  chair  over. 

Zeb,  witnessing  the  triumph  he  had  shared  in,  hugged  him 
self  with  joyous  pride. 

Kate  wrung  her  hands  in  horror  and  confusion.  Bob 
stepped  forward  quickly,  picked  up  Joe's  pistol  and  shoved 
it  in  his  pocket. 

He  was  white  and  sick  with  the  shame  of  his  triumph 
and  the  degradation  that  had  preceded  it.  He  wanted  to 
vomit,  and  he  glared  at  Joe  Yarmy  with  a  killing  rage. 

Kate  gasped  out  in  alarm.    "Don't — don't  hurt  him!" 

Bob  felt  none  too  kindly  toward  her  for  being  the  origin 
of  the  whole  ugly  business.  He  felt  something  like  the  knight 
at  King  Francis's  court  who  went  down  into  the  lions'  den 
for  the  lady's  glove,  but  flung  it  in  her  face  when  he  got  back. 
He  answered  Kate  with  a  rather  icy  chivalry: 

"I  won't  hurt  him  if  he  behaves  himself." 

He  was  so  much  the  master  of  the  field  that  he  resolved 
to  clean  it  up.  He  said  to  Joe: 

"Now,  sir,  do  you  still  say  I  lured  your  sister  here?" 

Joe  answered  with  the  obstinacy  of  abject  fright:  "Yes! 
And  you  did,  too,  damn  you.  You  did!" 

"That's  a  lie,"  Bob  said,  "if  Miss  Yarmy  will  pardon  my 

200 


HONOR  COMES  IN 

language.  You  say  I  trapped  her  innocence — that's  another. 
You  say  I  have  caused  people  to  talk  about  her — that  may 
be  true.  If  it  is,  I  can't  say  how  sorry  I  am." 

He  could  not  even  stoop  to  say  that  it  was  all  her  fault. 
She  looked  too  wan  and  piteous  to  be  blamed  for  what  she 
had  done.  Bob  was  no  Adam  to  tell  on  Eve.  In  fact,  he 
began  to  feel  a  little  more  tender  toward  her  for  the  very 
innocent  impulsiveness  that  had  brought  them  both  to  ruin. 

Joe  answered  Bob's  formal  regret  with  a  craven  petulance : 

"That  don't  square  nothin' !  Your  tellin'  me  you're  sorry 
don't  get  back  her  good  name." 

Bob  considered  this  very  solemnly.  All  the  traditions  of 
his  Virginian  ancestry;  all  the  noblesse-oblige  ideals  they  had 
brought  over  from  England  and  from  an  old,  old  England, 
coerced  him  to  a  decision  that  meant  a  great  renunciation 
of  his  every  hope  and  plan,  and  was  all  the  more  compulsive 
for  its  devastation. 

He  sighed  deeply,  bowed  low,  and  said  in  an  almost  vener 
able  tone : 

"I  reckon  that  is  true,  sir.  She  is  a  good  girl  and  I  have 
compromised  her." 

"Yes,  you  have,"  Joe  whined. 

"Then  I  will  marry  her." 

"  Many  her  ?"  Joe  howled.  Kate  whispered,  "  Marry  me?" 
and  Bob  bowed  again  with  a  courtesy  of  ancient  fashion. 

"If  she  will  do  me  the  honor  of  accepting  my  hand." 


Book    IV 
HONOR   GOES   OUT 


CHAPTER  I 

'"PHE  glory  of  Bob's  victory  had  sent  Zeb  into  the  rapturous 
1  glee  of  an  overgrown  pickaninny. 

He  had  hardly  been  able  to  smother  his  giggles  enough  to 
listen  to  the  earnest  negotiations  that  followed.  He  had 
hardly  understood  what  it  was  all  about,  for  he  had  no  re 
spect  for  Kate  Yarmy  or  her  reputation,  and  he  could  not 
imagine  why  his  master  was  taking  her  or  it  so  seriously. 

But  he  could  not  misunderstand  the  appalling  fact  that 
his  master  had  just  proposed  to  marry  the  woman. 

Zeb  had  committed  grand  larceny  and  had  been  willing  to 
commit  murder  to  separate  these  two,  and  now — he  was  so 
stunned  that  he  could  not  voice  his  resentment. 

Then  he  heard  Joe  Yarmy,  with  a  sudden  backwash  of  his 
old  insolence,  protesting: 

"Nah,  you  don't!  Do  you  think  I'm  goin'  to  leave  you 
make  a  monkey  of  me?" 

"What's  that?"  Bob  gasped,  brought  down  from  the  sky- 
ish  realms  of  courtesy  to  the  hard-pan  of  reality. 

Kate  interposed  with  a  request.  "  Mista  Taxta,  would  you 
be  kind  enough  to  let  me  have  a  word  with  Joe?" 

Zeb's  sorrowful  eyes  saw  Bob  bend  his  back  in  another 
antiquated  bow,  and  turn  to  enter  the  room  where  Zeb  waited. 
He  closed  the  door  behind  him. 

Zeb  saw  in  that  adored  young  face  such  a  look  of  despair 
as  shadows  the  features  of  the  doomed.  Bob  might  have 
seen  in  Zeb's  face  the  look  a  sad-eyed  bloodhound  fastens 
on  the  cold  hand  of  a  dead  master. 

Zeb  impetuously  shuffled  forward  and  caught  at  Bob's 
pistol. 

"What  are  you  trying  to  do?"  Bob  asked. 

" Gimme  'at  gun,"  Zeb  pleaded,  "and  lea'  me  kill  them  two 
scoun'rels." 

Bob  waved  him  aside  with  a  gesture.  "  I'm  much  obliged 

205 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

for  the  gun,  Zeb,  but,  as  you  see,  it  hasn't  any  cartridges  in 
it.    I  leave  the  clip  out  to  avoid  accidents.    You  can  pack 
it  up  with  the  rest  of  my  things." 
'Pack  it?" 

'Yes,  for  I'm  leaving  town  right  away." 
'Where  you  boun'  for,  Masta  Bob?" 
'Texas." 

'O  Gord!    Q  Gord,  he'p  us  all.    You  ain't  aaeanin'  what 
you  sayin'!" 

"If  you  want  to  go  with  me,  keep  quiet." 
But  Zeb  could  not  keep  quiet.    He  puttered  about,  mum 
bling  prayers  to  Heaven  and  to  Bob  in  rapid  alternation. 

If  Zeb  had  not  been  pleading  so  desperately  he  might  have 
heard  what  was  being  said  in  the  other  room. 

When  Bob  left,  Kate  stared  after  him  a  moment,  then 
turned  on  Joe  a  new  mien,  for  her. 

But  Joe  did  not  note  her  expression  at  first.  He  plounced 
into  a  chair  and  ridiculed  himself  and  life  with  a  sickly  cackle : 

"Well,  I'll  be—  Don't  this  beat  all  hell  ?  I'll  tell  the  world 
it  does.  Instead  of  his  coughin'  up  the  cash  he  says,  '  Bring 
on  the  parson' !  The  parson !  We  tried  to  work  an  old  game 
on  him,  but  he  put  over  a  new  twist  on  it.  You  gotta  give 
him  credit  for  that.  And  the  po'  boob  wants  to  marry  you 
— 'if  you  will  do  him  the  'onna'!  Oh,  wow-wow!" 

But  Kate  did  not  smile.  A  strange  light  seemed  to  play 
in  her  suddenly  snowy  features  as  she  faltered : 

"He  was  white  enough  to  offer  to  marry  me!  Me!  That's 
the  real  Southern  chivalry  you  read  about." 

"Southern  hellery!"  Joe  growled,  his  laughter  snuffed  out 
abruptly.  "How  we  goin'  to  get  out  of  this?" 

"  We're  not  goin'  to  get  out  of  it,"  Kate  answered.  "We're 
goin'  through  with  it." 

Joe  stared  at  her  in  a  daze.  "You're  not  thinkin'  of 
marryin'  him?" 

Kate  nodded. 

He  took  the  least  argument  first.  "But  McCann  said 
we  had  to  leave  town  to-night." 

"That's  so!"  Kate  mumbled,  and  her  jaw  dropped.  Her 
face  took  on  a  look  of  childish  tragedy,  the  look  of  a  child 
that  reaches  out  for  a  wonderful  new  doll  only  to  find  that 

206 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

it  is  not  for  her;  the  look  that  a  little  pauper  girl  wears  find 
ing  a  sheet  of  plate-glass  between  her  and  a  wonderful  new 
doll. 

If  she  had  never  repented  the  wickedness  of  her  past 
before,  she  did  so  now.  Her  penitence  may  have  been  in 
spired,  as  many  another  wretch's,  by  the  realization  that  the 
crimes  of  the  past  have  risen  up  like  a  plate-glass  window 
between  the  culprit  and  the  heaven  built  for  the  innocent. 
But  the  penitence  was  all  the  more  sincere  for  being  selfish. 

The  word  "McCann"  brought  a  picture  before  her  eyes, 
and  she  studied  it  in  retrospect. 

When  she  and  Joe  had  left  the  Summerlin  apartment  they 
had  had  little  to  say.  They  were  whipping  their  brains  as 
if  they  were  carpets  to  shake  out  the  dust  of  mystery  in  the 
disappearance  of  the  five  thousand  dollars. 

They  did  not  seek  the  imaginary  Texan  friend  they  had 
represented  as  so  eager  to  purchase  a  share  in  their  imaginary 
old  homestead. 

As  they  had  wandered  down  Broadway  in  a  state  of  com 
mon  disgust  and  mutual  exacerbation,  they  had  been  hailed 
unexpectedly  by  a  sturdy  citizen  of  large  bulk  whose  cordi 
ality  they  did  not  echo. 

"Hello,  Joe!"  he  murmured,  smilingly,  and  added  with 
more  enthusiasm,  "And  as  I  live  and  breathe,  it's  my  old 
friend  Kate!  Well,  well!" 

Kate  and  Joe  answered,  coldly,  "Hello,  McCann!" 

McCann  would  not  be  snubbed.  "I  haven't  seen  you  two 
in  a  coon's  age.  I  never  dreamed  you  were  in  town.  Does 
the  Skipper  know  you're  here?  I'll  bet  he  doesn't.  Come 
on  down  and  have  a  little  chat  with  the  old  man.  What  do 
you  say?" 

"We  'ain't  got  time,"  said  Joe.  "We're  goin'  out  on  an 
early  train." 

"Is  that  so?"  said  McCann.  "Well,  well!  I  don't  blame 
you.  With  so  many  people  in  town,  and  the  hot  weather 
comin'  on,  and  all,  I  don't  suppose  you'd  find  little  old  New 
York  healthy.  When  were  you  thinking  of  leaving?" 

"To-night,"  said  Joe. 

"Well,  well!    What  train?" 

"Six-four,  Pennsylvania,"  Joe  improvised. 

"Going  to  give  poor  little  Chicago  a  visit,  eh?  Give  'em 

207 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

my  love,"  McCann  purred.  "Always  glad  to  see  you  both. 
I'll  keep  an  eye  out  for  you  and  tip  the  Skipper  off.  If  you 
miss  the  six-four  and  happen  to  be  in  town  to-morrow,  he'll 
certainly  want  to  see  you,  and  he  won't  take  'No'  for  an 
answer.  Well ,  so  long ! ' ' 

He  waved  to  them  amiably  and  smiled  after  them  till 
they  disappeared  in  the  crowds. 

McCann  was  one  of  those  plain-clothes  pests  who  spy 
upon  the  industry  of  the  so-called  "criminal  classes,"  the 
original  communists,  who  do  not  come  out  in  the  open  as 
lovers  of  mankind  with  their  Marxian  and  other  radical 
theories  that  property  is  the  curse  of  mankind  and  all  capital 
is  loot,  but  go  about  doing  good  in  secret,  confiscating  stolen 
wealth  as  quietly  as  possible,  and  distributing  it  without  un 
necessary  conversation  or  parade. 

These  agile  benefactors  find  themselves  constantly  incon 
venienced  by  detectives  and  other  minions  of  tyranny.  Joe 
had  escaped  their  "camera  eyes"  somehow,  up  to  now,  since 
his  uniform  had  served  him  as  a  perfect  disguise,  though  the 
police  were  looking  everywhere  for  men  who  wore  it  without 
right.  Now  he  was  a  civilian  again. 

Kate,  too,  had  found  the  crowds  a  good  hiding-place.  She 
could  ordinarily  spot  a  detective  fifty  yards  away,  and  it 
was  easy  to  hide  her  face  by  simply  bending  her  head  and 
lowering  the  shield  of  her  broad  hat-brim. 

But  to-day  she  and  Joe  had  neglected  to  keep  their  eyes 
ahead.  Their  eyes  were  turned  inward  in  meditation,  and 
they  had  walked  right  into  McCann's  arms. 

They  were  not  inside  The  Dead-line  at  the  time,  and  he 
was  looking  for  more  important  fish  to  drift  by,  so  he  let 
them  go  on  their  promise  to  move  on  to  some  other  village. 
But  they  knew  that  he  would  know  whether  or  not  they  took 
the  promised  train.  If  they  did  not,  the  drag-net  would  go 
out  for  them.  It  was  not  wise  to  tamper  with  the  police 
when  they  were  amiable. 

They  had  resolved  to  make  one  last  drive  at  the  balance 
of  Bob's  ten  thousand.  Only  five  thousand  had  vanished. 
A  little  blackmail  had  occurred  to  them  as  the  one  last  swift 
chance.  Bob  had  thwarted  this  plot,  but  had  opened  a  new 
vista  before  Kate's  fascinated  eyes. 

And  now  McCann  looked  amiable  no  longer.  He  loomed 

208 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

as  a  fiend  who  barred  her  from  paradise.  He  stood  like  a 
semaphore  traffic  cop  ordering  her  to  take  a  de*tour  off  the 
straight  highway. 

She  remembered  Joe's  words,  "the  six-four."  She  glanced 
at  the  clock.  The  hands  were  just  leaving  three.  Her  face 
brightened  instantly.  She  led  an  impromptu  life. 

"I've  got  time  to  get  married  and  get  the  train,  too,  if 
we  pep  it  up  a  little,"  she  said. 

But  Joe  was  not  interested  in  matrimony.  "Agh,  forget 
it!  I'll  tell  him  we  spurn  his  dastardly  off  a — only  money 
will  soothe  our  outraged  feelin's." 

Kate  was  quite  calm  now.  She  broke  open  the  package  of 
hair-pins  Zeb  had  brought,  and  stood  by  the  mantel,  putting 
up  her  hair  by  the  mirror  above  it. 

"  He  wouldn't  fall  for  that  line  of  talk,  Joe.  He's  called  our 
bluff.  You  can't  get  his  money  away  without  a  gun.  And 
he's  got  your  gun — and  your  goat,  too.  He's  too  quick  for 
you,  Joe  darling.  A  straight  beats  the  little  crooked  hand 
you  play  every  time." 

"Well,  all  right.  We  can  marry  him  and  swipe  his  wad 
later,  and  lose  him  when  you're  tired  of  your  new  toy." 

"I'm  not  goin'  to  lose  him,  Joe,  or  get  tired  of  him.  I'm 
damned  tired  of  stallin'  along  with  you.  I'll  swap  any  two 
of  my  pasts  for  one  future  with  that  boy.  It's  the  first 
chance  I  ever  had  and  I'm  grabbin'  it.  They  may  have  my 
picture  in  the  Gallery,  but  out  of  this  man's  town  I'll  be  as 
white  as  anybody." 

Joe  was  convulsed  with  amusement  at  the  abrupt  trans 
formation.  He  laughed  silently  and  sneered. 

' '  Where  you  goin'  to  pull  off  all  this  Little  Eva  stunt  ?  We 
can't  go  back  to  Texas,  either,  you  know." 

"We  can't.  But  I  can— as  Mrs.  Robert  Taxta.  And, 
besides,  there's  oil  in  otha  states." 

Joe  stared  at  her  with  puzzled  mockery.  "You're  not 
lookin'  to  chuck  me — for  a  handsomer  man?" 

"Handsome  is  as  handsome  does." 

"What's  he  goin'  to  think  when  he  finds  out  about  this 
brotha  and  sista  business  of  ouahs  not  bein'  on  the  level?" 

"  Oh,  I  reckon  he'll  make  the  best  of  it,  like  the  white  man 
he  is." 

"Well,  if  that's  how  you  feel  about  it,  I  won't  stand  in 

209 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

your  way.  I'll  pretend  to  be  a  little  brotha  of  the  rich  as 
long  as  you  slip  me  somethin'  on  the  side  now  and  then." 

"Slip  you  some  of  ma  husband's  money!" 

"Listen  at  her!  'Ma  husband'!  Say,  you're  kind  of 
quick  with  that  purity  business,  ain't  you?  Well,  I  gotta 
live,  'ain't  I?" 

She  effaced  him  with  a  weary  cynicism.  "I  don't  know 
why." 

"Is  that  so!"  Joe  snarled.  "Well,  then  I  blow  the  game 
right  here  and  now." 

She  put  out  her  hand.  "I'll  take  care  of  you  somehow,  if 
you'll  take  care  of  me.  But  I  hope  you'll  turn  your  hand 
to  somethin'  straight  by  and  by,  because,  once  I'm  his  wife 
— God !  what  a  beautiful  thing  to  be !  His  wife !  His  wife !" 

"Easy  on  the  sob-stuff!"  Joe  muttered.  "We've  got  a 
train  to  make,  and  McCann  is  just  as  like  as  not  to  be  tailin' 
us.  If  we  try  to  pull  off  a  weddin',  he  may  put  the  parson 
hep." 

Kate  besought  him  meekly,  "You'll  lead  him  away  and 
lose  him,  won't  you,  Joe — as  a  favor  to  me?" 

"Then  I  wouldn't  get  to  see  you  married!  Oh,  well,  I 
newa  expected  to,  anyway.  Go  on  and  call  out  your 
bridegroom." 

Kate  inhaled  the  word  as  if  there  were  incense  about  it: 
then  she  went  to  the  door  and  tapped  upon  it  with  an 
unwonted  shyness. 

Bob  came  into  the  room  with  an  effort  at  good  cheer,  and 
Kate  told  another  of  her  farewell  lies,  each  of  which  she 
hoped  would  be  her  last. 

"I've  persuaded  my  brotha  to  give  up  his  ideas  of  revenge 
and  let  us  be  happy  togetha.  And  I'm  goin'  to  try  to  make 
you  happy.  There's  one  trouble.  I  told  you  we  had  to 
leave  town  to-night.  If  we  don't,  we — we  might  lose  our 
home.  You  rememba  my  tellin'  you?  Do  you  reckon  we 
could  get  married  now  and — and  you  could  follow  later? 
Could  you,  do  you  imagine?" 

"I'll  take  the  train  with  you." 

"  You  will!  but— " 

"I  think  I'd  rather.  It  wouldn't  be  very  courteous  to 
send  my  bride  all  that  way  alone.  So  if  you  don't  mind — " 

"If  I  don't  mind!"  Kate  exclaimed,  dazzled  by  the  unbe- 

210 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

nevable  prosperity  of  her  audacity.  She  had  come  here 
with  a  criminal  purpose,  and  a  good  fairy  was  sanctifying 
and  glorifying  her  with  redemption. 

Bob  was  unable  to  respond  to  the  lilt  in  her  voice.  He 
took  Joe's  pistol  from  his  pocket  and  restored  it  to  its  owner. 
Joe  sheepishly  accepted  it  and  shoved  it  back  into  the 
holster.  There  was  no  need  for  words  to  the  formal  cere 
mony.  Bob  was  as  meek  a  conqueror  as  U.  S.  Grant,  though 
Joe  was  no  Robert  E.  Lee.  He  was  sufficiently  shamed, 
however,  and  Bob  shifted  the  subject. 

"What  train  are  you  taking,  please?" 

"The — the — "  began  Kate.  She  turned  to  Joe,  who 
answered  for  her.  "The  six-four  from  the  Pennsylvania 
Station." 

"Then  I'll  take  the  six-four." 

"You'll  newa  make  it." 

"  Oh  yes,  I  can !    It  won't  take  me  long  to  pack." 

"Travel  is  so  heavy  it's  uncertain  about  gettin'  any 
reservation.  There  might  be  a  drawin'-room  turned  back 
at  the  last  minute,  though.  Shall  I  find  out?" 

"  If  you'll  be  so  good."  Bob  was  groping  through  clouds. 
"And  then  there's  the  preacher,  of  course!  Who's  a  good 
preacher?" 

"Oh,  an  alderman  will  do  the  trick,"  said  Joe. 

"The  Taxters  are  always  married  in  church,"  Bob  an 
swered.  Kate  adored  him  for  this.  Joe  accepted  it  as 
another  symptom  of  his  insanity. 

"Oh,  well —  But  then  there's  the  license.  You  both 
gotta  drill  down  to  the  Municipal  Buildin'  to  get  that,  and 
the  bureau  closes,  I  reckon,  at  five." 

Bob  glanced  at  his  wrist-watch.  "We  can  make  it,  I 
imagine — if  we  take  the  subway.  Then  we  can  come  back 
to  the — I  reckon  the  Little  Church  Around  the  Corner  is 
the  best  place.  And  we  could  taxi  from  there  to  the  station. 
Could  you  telephone  the  minister?" 

Joe  did  not  mind  the  other  jobs,  but  parsons  were  out  of 
his  line. 

"Kate  had  betta  do  that,"  he  said. 

She  was  in  a  mood  for  talking  to  a  preacher,  so  she  nodded : 

"I'll  have  to  finish  packin'  and  pay  the  hotel  bill,  and 
then  I  could  come  back.  I'll  have  to  rush." 

211 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Bob  hesitated  a  moment,  then  he  lowered  his  voice  as  he 
spoke  to  Joe;  for  Kate  also. 

"One  thing  more,  please.  Since  I  am  marrying  your 
sister,  I'd  like  it  to  appear  like — like  other  marriages.  I 
want  nobody  to  know  the — the  circumstances — especially 
not  my  mother —  Oh,  Lord!  I've  got  to  tell  her!" 

"You  can  write  it  to  her,"  Kate  said. 

"But  she's  coming  here  any  minute." 

Bob  was  trembling  like  a  leaf  now.  He  had  something  to 
be  afraid  of.  Now  he  knew  cowardice.  He  could  face  the 
world  with  defiance,  but  a  man  cannot  defy  his  mother.  He 
can  and  does  break  her  heart,  but  cravenly,  not  with  defiance. 

Kate  had  tact  enough  not  to  attempt  to  belittle  his  terror. 
She  felt  that  he  would  prefer  to  be  left  alone  with  his  shame. 
She  laid  a  timid  hand  on  his  arm  and  murmured: 

"  I  wish  you  loved  me  the  way  you  love  her.  I'm  goin'  to 
try  to  make  you  learn  how.  But — well,  I'll  go  get  ready  and 
telephone  the  minista,  and  come  back  for  you  as  soon  as 
I  can." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Bob,  foggily. 

Joe  tried  to  be  rid  of  the  uncongenial  solemnity.  "I'll 
get  the  trunks  off  and  get  transportation  and — and  meet  you 
at  the  nearest  subway  station,  so's  we  can  all  go  down  to  the 
Municipal  Buildin'  togetha." 

"Thank  you!"  said  Bob. 

Kate  and  Joe  had  hardly  left  the  room  when  there  was  a 
knock  at  the  door  that  shook  the  mists  away  from  Bob  and 
brought  the  fearsome  realities  back. 

He  shivered  with  a  reversion  to  childhood  guilt  and  opened 
the  door  to  admit  his  mother. 

She  came  in,  smiling  and  queenly,  and  he  bowed  his  head 
before  her  as  Cain  might  have  drooped  before  his  mother. 


CHAPTER  II 

MRS.  TAXTER  had  not  yet  recovered  from  the  blissful 
feeling  that  her  boy  had  been  reprieved  from  the  grave 
of  France. 

She  gathered  him  to  her  bosom  again  and  kissed  him  with 
a  prayerful  gratitude  that  he  was  still  alive. 

"Well,  honey,  here  I  am.  Who  were  your  friends  I  saw 
just  leaving  you?  Ratha  pretty  girl." 

"Do  you  really  think  so,  mother?"  Bob  demanded,  with 
an  eagerness  that  puzzled  her. 

She  qualified  her  praise  a  whit:  "A  little  too  pretty,  per 
haps.  Who  is  she?" 

Before  Bob  could  launch  upon  the  dolorous  sea  of  explana 
tions  Zeb  came  into  the  room.  Bob  had  told  his  mother 
all  he  knew  about  the  old  man,  and  Mrs.  Taxter  welcomed 
the  lost  black  sheep  to  the  old  fold  again : 

"This  is  Zeb,  I  suppose." 

"Yassum!  this  Zeb.  Howdy,  ma'am,  howdy!  I  admiah 
to  find  you  lookin'  so — so  Taxta-like." 

Mrs.  Taxter  laughed  at  the  ready  flattery.  "And  how  does 
it  seem  to  be  back  with  us  and  working  for  my  son?" 

Zeb  rolled  his  eyes.  "Oh,  Lawdy!  it's  jes'  like  workin'  for 
his  gran'pappy,  only  mo'  so.  He  got  the  same  domineerin' 
ways  wit'  men-folks  and  the  same  fibble  ways  wit'  women 
folks.  Oh,  Miss  Lee,  you  jes'  in  time  to  save  him.  I  cain't 
do  nothin'  with  him.  Mebbe  you  kin." 

"Why,  what's  up  now?" 

"Them  two  Yah—" 

But  Bob  broke  in  with  a  sharp,  "I'll  tell  it!" 

Zeb  was  frantic  enough  to  be  insubordinate.  He  ap 
pealed  to  the  bewildered  mother,  "He  won't  tell  it  like  I 
will!" 

"Leave  the  room!"  Bob  commanded. 

"  You  lea'  me  tell  it !"  Zeb  protested,  like  a  frightened  child. 

213 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Pardon  me  a  moment,  mother,"  Bob  said,  with  a  grim 
gentleness.  Then  he  led  Zeb  by  the  arm  into  the  next  room 
and  closed  the  door.  He  spoke  to  him  as  to  a  froward 
youngster.  "Now  look  here,  Zeb — if  you  ever  belonged  to 
our  family — " 

"Oh,  you  cain't  doubt  that!"  Zeb  cried,  in  an  ague  of 
terror. 

"  Well,  then,  you've  been  up  North  so  long  you've  forgotten 
what  the  Taxters  expect  of  their — their  people." 

"Oh  no— I  'ain't!" 

"Then  here's  your  chance  to  prove  it.  You're  too  old  for 
me  to  trounce;  but  I  can  turn  you  off.  And  I  will  unless  you 
obey  me  in  everything  and  obey  me  in  silence." 

Zeb  was  thoroughly  cowed.  He  stammered:  "I'm  silence. 
You  don't  year  me  talkin',  does  you?  I  ain't  sayin'  a  word." 

"Then  keep  quiet  and  pack  my  things — everything — as 
fast  as  you  can,  for  I'm  going  where  you'll  not  want  to 
follow  me!" 

"  I'd  follow  you  to  the  een'  of  this  worl'  and  the  nex'." 

"I'm  only  going  to  Texas  this  trip." 

"I'm  right  with  you,  Masta  Bob." 

"Well,  I'm  not  sure  you  can  get  on  the  train.  But  I'll 
arrange  for  you  and  send  for  you  later,  on  one  condition — 
on  one  condition." 

This  bereavement  and  desertion  horrified  Zeb,  but  he 
would  not  protest.  He  listened  to  Bob's  instructions 
humbly : 

"So  get  me  ready — and  lay  out  my  black  morning  coat 
and  my  silk  hat  and  patent-leather  shoes,  for  I'm  going  to  be 
married  before  I  start." 

"Oh,  Masta  Bob,  for  the  love  of — "  Bob  gave  him  one 
look  and  he  changed  his  tune  to:  "I'm  silent.  I  ain't  sayin' 
a  word." 

"Get  my  trunk  packed  and  send  it  to  the  Pennsylvania 
— not  to  the  Grand  Central — at  once!  Understand?" 

"The  Centralvania,  not  the  Grandsulpennsyl,"  Zeb 
babbled. 

"  No !     The  Pennsylvania. ' ' 

"I  got  you,  Masta  Bob.  I'll  send  'em  to  the  Grandest 
Central  they  is — I  mean  the  Pennsylvaniest.  Don't  you 
worry  'bout  that." 

214 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

"  By  special  express.  If  you  can't  get  an  expressman,  take 
my  things  to  the  station  yourself." 

"Yassa.  And  I'm  to  lay  out  yo'  funeral  clothes — yo' 
weddin'  clothes." 

"And  take  my  hatbox  to  the  station  with  you,  so  that  I 
can  wear  a  soft  hat  on  the  train." 

"Yassa,  you'll  sholy  need  a  soft  hat  for  that  soft — heart 
of  yourn." 

"And  take  along  my  straw  hat,  too — and — and  hurry  up!" 

Zeb  nodded  his  head  violently  and  Bob  left  the  province 
where  he  could  speak  with  despotic  authority  and  entered 
the  realm  where  he  was  a  suppliant  for  mercy. 

"Well,  honey,  what's  all  this  excitement?"  his  mother 
asked.  "You  and  your  Zeb  don'  seem  to  understand  each 
other  ve'y  puffectly." 

Bob  sighed  to  the  depths  of  his  being  and  spoke  with 
complete  dejection: 

"It's  pretty  serious,  mother,  and  I'm  sorry  to  have  to 
bring  so  much  trouble  on  your  beautiful  head." 

"That's  what  mothas'  heads  are  for,  honey,"  said  Mrs. 
Taxter,  cheerful  through  ignorance.  "But  first,  tell  me,  is 
there  a  good  jeweler  near  here?" 

"A  jeweler?    There's  one  in  this  block,  I  reckon.    Why?" 

Mrs.  Taxter,  never  dreaming  that  Bcb  had  anything  of 
real  importance  to  broach,  took  a  glittering  handful  of  linked 
gems  from  her  handbag.  "I  brought  up  this  old  necklace 
of  diamonds  and  pearls — the  one  yo'  gre't-grandfatha 
Taxta  gave  to  yo'  gre't-grandmotha.  Your  fatha  gave  it  to 
me.  It  needs  to  be  restrung  and  reset.  I  brought  it  up  for 
you  to  give  to  the  next  Taxta  bride." 

"The  next  bride!"  Bob  gasped,  dazed  by  the  ironic  appo- 
siteness  of  the  necklace. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  still  unaware  of  the  ominous  atmosphere. 
"And  speaking  of:  the  next  Taxta  bride,  I  invited  April  and 
her  motha  to  meet  me  here." 

Zeb  had  neglected  also  to  tell  Bob  this  news  in  the  shower 
of  excitements  precipitated  about  his  old  head.  And  Bob 
had  forgotten  that  his  mother  had  spoken  of  her  plan. 

She  was  vexed  at  his  stupid  astonishment  and  she  said, 
"I  told  you  I  was  goin'  to  ask  them  to  meet  me  here,  and 
you  said,  'All  right.'" 
15  2I5 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Bob  nodded  and  pressed  his  hand  against  his  aching  head. 
His  brain  and  heart  were  both  breaking  under  the  stress  put 
upon  them  by  the  results  of  his  heedless  chivalry.  He  felt 
that  he  would  spend  the  rest  of  his  life  atoning  for  the  odious 
consequences  of  that  impulsive  generosity.  He  vowed  that 
he  would  never  try  to  do  the  decent  thing  again. 

One  of  his  chief  reasons  for  dashing  off  to  Texas  in  such 
haste  was  his  dread  of  facing  April  with  the  news  of  his  wild 
act.  He  had  sacrificed  himself  to  save  Kate  Yarmy's  good 
name,  and  now  he  realized  that  he  had  sacrificed  also  many 
precious  things  that  were  not  his  to  dispose  of  as  he  wished. 
He  had  squandered  his  mother's  happiness  and  her  pride, 
and  he  had  defaulted  in  April's  claim  upon  him. 

He  felt  a  greater  cowardice  than  before.  He  had  no 
morale  left.  He  was  like  one  of  those  nerve-broken  wretches 
whom  "shell-shock"  robbed  of  their  courage. 

When  he  thought  of  his  mother  he  wanted  to  sink  down  and 
grovel  in  the  dust.  When  he  thought  of  April  he  wanted  to 
run.  In  a  frenzy  of  abject  poltroonery  he  began  to  look 
wildly  about  for  his  hat.  A  man  forgets  honor,  dignity,  pain, 
everything,  before  he  forgets  his  hat. 

As  he  stood  poised  for  stampede,  there  was  a  rat-tat  of 
knuckles  on  the  door.  His  mother  waited  a  moment  for  him 
to  open  it,  then,  as  the  knock  was  repeated,  called  out: 

"Come  in!" 

And  in  came  April's  mother,  and  April,  and,  after  them, 
Pansy.  All  three  ran  to  Mrs.  Taxter  as  the  new-come  stranger 
and  lavished  upon  her  an  affection  of  many  years'  ripening. 

Bob  was  tempted  to  dart  round  them  into  the  hall  and 
away.  But  April  held  him  fascinated. 

She  seemed  to  personify  her  name.  She  fell  upon  the 
harsh  March  of  his  heart  like  a  very  radiance  of  spring. 
She  had  changed  her  gown  again,  this  time  to  conquer  him 
with.  And  she  succeeded. 

Her  shapeliness,  her  grace,  the  laughter  in  her  fond  voice 
made  her  beautiful  beyond  relinquishment.  She  belonged  to 
him  so  wonderfully  that  it  made  him  her  chattel. 

And  yet  the  very  preciousness  of  her  made  his  bitter  soul 
believe  her  unattainable,  too  precious  a  possession  for  a 
world  all  awry. 

From  the  cluster  about  Mrs.  Taxter  Mrs.  Summerlin  was 

216 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

the  first  to  turn.  She  changed  her  smile  of  welcome  to  an 
expression  of  fitting  sobriety  as  she  gave  Bob  her  hand  and 
bad  news : 

"We've  searched  and  searched  and  turned  the  house  upside 
down,  Bob,  and  we  can't  find  that  money." 

Bob  was  so  crushed  beneath  the  later  burdens  that  the 
first  disaster  of  the  black  day  seemed  to  be  a  trifle.  He 
waived  its  importance. 

"Oh,  don't  think  of  it." 

April  came  forward  shyly,  remembering  the  morning's 
quarrel,  which  had  not  yet  been  formally  absolved.  She 
gave  him  a  warm  clasp  of  her  lovable  hand,  and  said,  with  an 
amiable  mockery  of  humility : 

"I've  come  to  ask  you  for  that  property  of  mine  you  car 
ried  off — that  ring  you  stole." 

It  went  through  Bob  like  a  knife  that  she  was  asking  to 
be  his  betrothed  again.  While  he  groped  for  words,  he  heard 
Pansy  chattering  to  Mrs.  Taxter  as  to  the  little  girl  she  had 
dandled  once  upon  a  time : 

"Lawd  bress  you,  Miss  Lee,  you  ain't  one  day  olda  than 
what  you  was.  I  'clare  you  and  my  Miss  Ma'y  newa  is 
goin'  grow  up,  is  ye?" 

"Grow  up?"  Mrs.  Taxter  groaned.  "Look  at  my  gray 
hair!" 

"Pooh!"  whiffed  Pansy;  "them's  on'y  brang  on  by  that 
young  rascal — like  Miss  Ma'y's  is  cause'  by  that  wil'  chile 
of  hern.  We-all  ain't  newa  goin'  have  no  peace  twell  we 
gits  them  two  married  off  an'  outen  the  way." 

"I  reckon  you're  right,  Pansy."  Mrs.  Taxter  sighed. 
"I  felt  it  in  my  bones,  and  that's  why  I  brought  this  old 
Taxta  necklace  up,  hoping  I  could  get  rid  of  it.  April,  you 
put  this  thing  on  and  see  how  it  fits  you.  It  belongs  round 
the  throat  of  the  next  Taxta  bride." 

April's  eyes  were  alight  with  the  prospect  of  this  deco 
ration,  and  she  waited  only  for  Bob's  "Amen!"  to  confirm  it. 

But  the  sight  of  the  visible,  tangible  emblem  of  the 
marriage  that  was  too  beautiful  to  be  woke  him  to  the  ne 
cessity  for  confession.  At  any  moment  Kate  Yarmy  would 
be  hastening  back  to  claim  him  and  to  prove  him  a  traitor 
to  everybody  and  everything. 

He  spoke  up  huskily:  "Wait  a  moment,  mother,  please. 

217 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

I've  got  something  to  say  first."  He  saw  Pansy  eying  him, 
and  he  could  not  humble  himself  before  her.  He  said: 
"Oh,  Pansy,  you'll  find  your  old  friend  Zeb  in  the  next 
room.  He's  hard  at  work.  You  might  help  him." 

Pansy  took  her  dismissal  with  good  grace  and  went  into 
the  bedroom  where  Zeb  was  making  chaos  out  of  the  order 
he  had  so  lovingly  arranged.  She  stared  at  him  in  wonder: 

"Well,  Pafessa  Taxta,  I'm  sent  in  yere  to  he'p  you. 
What  you  packin'  and  where  you  takin'  it?" 

Zeb  needed  a  fellow-sufferer,  and  he  turned  to  Pansy  with 
a  woeful  eagerness: 

"  Pansy,  I'm  what's  packin'  a  heartload  of  trouble  to  carry 
fur  and  wide." 

His  sky  had  fallen  about  him  and  he  had  not  caught  a 
single  lark.  While  he  told  Pansy  of  the  woes  of  the  day,  on 
the  other  side  of  the  door  Bob  made  ready  to  unpack  his  soul 
of  its  mass  of  well-intentioned  evils. 

He  was  so  long  in  approaching  his  exordium  and  so 
wretched  of  carriage  that  April  thought  to  hearten  him  with 
a  fuller  confession.  She  drew  him  aside  from  the  others 
and  whispered : 

"Bob,  I  want  to  apologize  for  my  wretched  temper  this 
morning.  If  your  mother  had  heard  me  she  wouldn't  have 
wanted  to  waste  that  necklace  on  me.  I  was  just  plain 
jealous.  I  didn't  like  that  Yarmy  woman  one  bit,  and  I 
couldn't  endure  the  thought  of  your  liking  her.  If  you  can 
forgive  me — my  finger  is  just  homesick  for  that  little  ring 
again." 

Bob  took  it  from  his  pocket  and  tossed  it  in  his  restless 
hands,  as  if  he  were  tossing  a  drop  of  glistening  rain.  A 
glistening  drop  or  two  fell  from  his  eyes  into  the  palm  of  his 
hand,  and  his  story  broke  from  him  in  disorder. 

"Oh,  April,  April,  why  didn't  you  keep  it  on!  Then  they 
could  have  killed  me  before  I  would  have — " 

"Killed  you?"  April  cried.  "What  are  you  saying,  Bob? 
You  don't  mean  that  something  has  happened  to  prevent  my 
getting  the  ring  back?" 

"Yes.  It's  too  late.  And  now — now — do  you  remember 
what  somebody  wrote — about  Launcelot,  wasn't  it?  'His 
honor  rooted  in  dishonor  stood  and — and — '" 

April  finished  it  for  him: 

218 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

'"And  faith  unfaithful  kept  him  falsely  true."' 

"That's  it,"  Bob  sighed,  desperate  indeed  to  have  taken 
refuge  in  poetry. 

"But  you're  not  Launcelot,"  April  said. 

"No,  and  she's  not  Guenever,  but — well — I'm  in  the  same 
fix." 

"She's  not  Guenever?  She  who?"  April  asked,  and  Bob 
knitted  his  brows  further. 

"I  don't  know  how  I  can  explain  it  without  being  a  worse 
cad  than  I  am  now,  but — " 

"Perhaps  you'd  better  not  explain  it  at  all,"  said  April, 
with  an  icy  dread.  "And  perhaps  it's  not  as  bad  as  you 
think.  I  can't  imagine  you  bein'  a  cad,  Bob.  I've  accused 
you  of  lots  of  things,  but  never  of  that.  Probably  you  just 
imagine  it's  worse  than  it  is." 

"  No,  it's  as  bad  as  it  can  be,  and  there's  no  way  out  of  it." 

Despair  is  the  mother  of  bravery,  and  April  smiled  as  she 
caught  his  hands  and  closed  them  upon  the  dancing  ring  and 
murmured : 

"Then  we'll  both  have  to  be  as  plucky  about  it  as  we  can." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  had  been  whispering  to  Mrs.  Taxter  a 
little  history  of  the  morning's  quarrel.  Mrs.  Taxter  had 
lived  through  so  many  April-Robert  wars  that  she  did  not 
take  this  one  seriously.  She  called  Mrs.  Summerlin's  atten 
tion  to  Bob  and  April  and  their  clasped  hands. 

"Look,  they've  made  up  again,  as  always." 

She  called  out  merrily: 

"Now,  Bob,  you  promised  to  tell  us  something  terribly 
exciting.  What  is  it?" 

Bob  released  his  hands  from  April's,  put  away  the  tantaliz 
ing  ring,  glanced  at  the  clock  to  see  how  much  time  he  would 
have  before  Kate  might  return,  and  began  with  another 
beginning : 

"Sit  down,  mother — and  Mrs.  Summerlin — and  April — 
and  get  your  smelling-salts  handy." 

"What  in  Heaven's  name?"  Mrs.  Taxter  gasped  as  she 
sank  into  a  chair. 

"I  thought  it  was  in  Heaven's  name,"  said  Bob,  "but  I 
reckon  I  was  thinking  of  the  wrong  place." 


219 


CHAPTER  III 

MRS.  TAXTER  looked  at  Mrs.  Summerlin  and  at  April 
to  see  if  they  had  any  hint  of  the  mysterious  secret 
Bob  was  so  long  in  divulging.     Their  faces  were  blank  with 
anxious  ignorance. 

Bob  simply  would  not  come  to  the  point.  He  backed  off 
and  filled  on  another  tack: 

"Mother,  you've  often  told  me  that  your  ma'iage  with 
father  was  a  love-match." 

This  sudden  opening  of  a  long,  dim  vista  into  the  past 
softened  Mrs.  Taxter's  eyes  and  her  voice : 

"Yes!    Oh  yes!" 

"You  told  me,  too,  that  your  mother  objected  to  him,  and 
his  father  had  a  quarrel"  [pronounced  "quawl"]  "with  your 
father,  who  objected  to  you." 

Mrs.  Taxter  smiled  as  over  some  Elizabethan  comedy 
quaint  with  ancientry,  and  she  nodded.  Bob  went  on,  en 
couraged  by  the  acceptance  of  his  premises : 

"So  you  ran  off  and  got  ma'ied"  (pronounced  like  a 
drawled-out  "mad"). 

Mrs.  Taxter  confessed  the  outlawed  crime:  "Yes,  my  boy 
— it  was  a  runaway  match  and  ve'y  happy." 

She  inhaled  the  incense  of  memory  and  sighed.  "Heaven! 
while  he  lived."  Bob  left  her  a  moment  in  the  sacred  fields, 
reluctant  to  drag  her  thence  to  his  very  sordid  patch  of  this 
tles.  He  waited  till  she  came  back  with  a  start  and  demanded : 

"But  you  were  going  to  talk  about  you — not  me!  Why 
do  you  ask  these  foolish  old  questions?" 

"Because  I  wanted  to  see  if  you  believed  in  runaway 
matches." 

"Well,  I  can't  say  I  do.    Ouah  case  was  most  exceptional." 

"Well,  so  is  mine,"  said  Bob,  and,  having  reached  his 
mark,  like  the  aviator  he  was,  pulled  the  lever  and  released 
the  bombshell,  "I'm  going  to  run  away,  too." 

220 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

Mrs.  Taxter  leaped  to  her  feet.  Mrs.  Summerlin  cowered 
in  her  chair.  April  clenched  her  every  muscle  like  the  hand 
of  one  who  is  utterly  startled. 

Bob  pressed  his  mother  back  to  her  chair  and  sat  upon 
the  arm  of  it,  embracing  her  to  quell  the  panic  that  made  her 
tremulous.  His  smile  was  ghoulish,  and  he  felt  the  pride  of 
a  grave-robber  caught  by  a  searchlight: 

"You  remember  the  girl  who  left  here  just  as  you  came 
in?  You  said  she  was  very  pretty."  He  explained  to  April, 
in  a  clammy  voice,  "  Miss  Yarmy,  April,  you  know." 

April's  smile  was  sweet  as  uncoated  quinine,  ''She's  the 
Guenever  you  spoke  of?" 

Bob  could  neither  defend  his  enforced  bride  nor  permit 
her  to  be  criticized.  He  spoke  harshly,  "She's  to  be  my  wife." 

Now  his  mother  began  to  fight  him  bodily  and  mentally, 
to  struggle  against  his  strong  young  arms  as  against  his 
mad  decision : 

"Bob!  Let  me  go!  You  don't  mean  it!  You  can't! 
You  don't  love  her!  You  know  you  don't!" 

When  we  dare  not  make  statements  we  ask  questions. 
Bob  said,  sternly,  to  protect  his  weakness,  "Should  I  marry 
her  if  I  didn't?" 

Mrs.  Taxter  knew  him  well  enough  to  cry  with  terrible 
intuition:  "  Of  co'se  you  would.  You'd  marry  anybody  who 
made  a  claim  on  your  generosity.  But  I  won't  permit  it. 
She  sha'n't  have  you." 

Bob  worshiped  her  for  this.  He  wanted  to  bury  his  head 
in  that  tumultuous  bosom  of  hers  and  weep  his  agony  out. 
It  was  the  bitterest  part  of  the  expiation  he  had  to  make  for 
his  knightliness  that  he  had  to  massacre  the  heart  of  his 
mother  and  of  April.  He  could  only  groan  for  mercy  now. 
"Mother,  I  beg  you!" 

The  anguish  in  his  tone  drugged  her  resistance. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  began  to  tremble  now  for  her  own  child's 
happiness.  She  faltered : 

"Why,  Bob,  I  always  thought  you  and  April — " 

April's  pride  was  in  rags,  but  she  would  not  play  the 
beggar.  She  forced  herself  to  be  gentle  and  cheerful  and 
matter-of-fact. 

"No,  mother,  that's  all  over  and  done  'with.  Bob  and  I 
understand  each  other  perfectly.  We  are  awfully  fond  of 

221 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

each  other,  but  we  quarrel  too  easily,  so  we  decided  that  we'd 
call  all  bets  off  and  just  be  good  friends.  Bob's  made  a  better 
choice  and  he's  going  to  be  very  happy,  I  know." 

Mrs.  Summerlin  wept  feebly,  as  over  a  grave.  "We  always 
loved  Bob." 

Bob's  mother  was  afraid  of  this  thin  little  wail.  It  had  a 
sympathetic  vibration  that  her  heart  was  all  too  well  attuned 
to.  So  she  hastened  to  pretend  to  indignation: 

"When  did  this  extraordinary — infatuation  come  ova  you, 
Bob?" 

"Very  recently.    It  was  a  case  of — of — " 

Mrs.  Taxter  spoke  the  loathsome  words  for  him.  "Love  at 
first  sight?" 

Bob  nodded.  Mrs.  Taxter  asked,  "It  isn't  going  to  be  a 
case  of  ma'iage  at  first  sight,  too,  is  it?" 

Bob  dropped  another  shell.  "They're  telephoning  the 
minister  now,  she  and  her  brother." 

Mrs.  Taxter  broke  free  now  and  sprang  to  her  feet  in  un 
controllable  panic:  "No,  no,  no!  They  sha'n't  have  you! 
There's  something  wrong  about  it  all.  You're  not  telling 
me  the  truth.  I  won't  let  you  destroy  yourself  this  way." 

Bob  was  in  a  mood  to  destroy  himself  and  all  the  people 
in  the  world  and  the  world  itself.  For  the  first  time  in  his 
life  he  understood  why  Samson,  whose  career  had  been 
similarly  wrecked  by  a  foreign  woman,  had  taken  a  tre 
mendous  exultant  delight  in  pulling  the  crowded  temple 
down  and  burying  himself  under  the  wreckage.  He  envied 
Samson  his  majestic  privilege.  He  did  his  best  to  imitate 
him  now,  and  spoke  with  a  deadly  wrath  at  circumstance 
and  all  its  victims. 

"My  bride  is  leaving  for  Texas  to-night — immediately 
after  our  wedding,  and  I  am  going  with  her  on  the  six-four 
train." 

This  wrecked  his  mother's  commanding  mood  and  re 
duced  her  to  frantic  appeal: 

"Bob  honey,  my  sweet  boy,  my  darling  child,  you 
couldn't  leave  your  poor  old  mother  like  this.  You  just 
couldn't.  Afta  I've  come  all  this  way  to  see  you!  You 
wouldn't,  would  you,  honey  ?  Say  you  wouldn't  treat  me  so !" 

Bob  dashed  his  hand  across  his  brow  like  a  Cain  trying  to 
scratch  away  a  brand  new-seared.  He  pleaded: 

222 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

"Mother,  you're  killing  me.  I've  got  to  go.  I've  got  to 
go.  I'll  come  back  soon.  I'll  come  back  rich.  Don't  make 
it  any  harder  for  me.  Don't!" 

This  cry  checked  her  again.  A  mother's  woes  must  always 
yield  place  to  her  children's.  She  turned  her  eyes  to  April 
as  the  only  reinforcements  she  could  count  upon. 

April  went  forward  into  the  trenches  now  as  she  had 
vainly  wanted  to  during  the  war,  to  bind  up  wounds  and 
distil  courage  from  a  heart  full  of  terror: 

"Now,  Mrs.  Taxter,  you  know  it  had  to  come.  You 
know  that  mothers  are  never  satisfied  with  the  wives  their 
sons  select." 

"Oh,  if  Bob  had  chosen  you — " 

"You'd  have  wanted  to  murder  me  in  a  week.  You  know 
my  rotten  temper  and  my  wild  jealousy,  and,  besides,  I'm 
extravagant  and  lazy  and  selfish  and — you'd  have  been  as 
sick  of  me  as  Bob  has  been  and  would  be." 

Bob's  heart  was  bursting  with  denials  of  this  self-perse 
cution,  but  how  could  he  protest  his  eternal  devotion  to  April 
at  such  a  time?  He  had  to  let  her  go  on,  while  she  held  his 
mother  in  her  arms : 

"It's  all  goin'  to  come  out  all  right.  Bob  knows  best. 
He'll  come  back  rich  and  great,  and  he'll  bring  along  a  more 
beautiful  wife  than  you  expected.  Miss  Yarmy  is  a  very 
handsome — " 

She  hesitated  over  "girl"  and  "woman,"  rejected  both, 
but  could  not  say  "lady,"  and  left  the  adjective  suspended 
in  air:  "And  everything  will  come  out  all  right.  You'll 
see." 

Bob  had  to  give  some  token  of  his  gratitude.  He  mum 
bled,  "God  bless  you — hon — "  He  could  not  call  her 
"honey"  any  more.  So  he  called  her  nothing. 

Mrs.  Taxter  was  weeping  wholeheartedly  now,  but  about 
his  going  away  so  far  and  so  soon.  April  had  an  answer  to 
this: 

"If  mothers  had  their  way,  you  know,  there'd  never  be 
any  sailors  or  soldiers  or  anybody  worth  while,  would  there? 
You  nearly  died  when  Bob  went  into  aviation.  You  were 
frightened  to  death  when  he  went  to  France.  Well,  look  at 
him  now.  He's  lived  through  all  that  and  is  looking  mighty 
well.  You  oughtn't  to  despair  of  his  going  through  a  little 

223 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

thing  like  a  first  wedding.  If  this  wedding  doesn't  turn  out — 
why,  we'll  divorce  him  from  that  one  and  try  somebody 
else." 

Mrs.  Taxter's  diaphragm  was  uncertain  whether  it  were 
called  on  for  sobs  or  laughter,  and  her  lips  were  twisted 
between  smile  and  torment.  The  distance  between  tragedy 
and  burlesque  depends  on  the  way  you  face.  New  York 
is  about  twenty-four  thousand  miles  away  from  Brooklyn 
as  you  go  west;  but  if  you  turn  east  you  can  get  there  in 
less  than  a  minute  by  the  subway.  So  Tragedy  and  Farce 
are  but  suburbs  of  each  other. 

Mrs.  Taxter  was  on  the  suspension-bridge  between  the 
two  when  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door. 

Bob's  heart  rapped  his  breast  in  the  same  rhythm.  He 
was  sure  it  was  Elate  come  to  claim  him  and  to  drag  him 
from  his  family  with  a  parody  of  the  ancient  bridal-battle. 

Bob  went  to  the  door  with  the  grace  and  humanity  of  one 
of  those  steam-men  they  used  to  show  in  dime  museums. 

But  in  stepped  the  brisk  and  radiant  figure  of  Hugo  Clyde, 
the  broker,  the  born  salesman.  He  came  in  speaking,  with 
a  running  start  that  carried  him  some  distance  before  he 
could  check  himself  at  the  amazing  sight  of  April,  her  mother, 
and  a  strange  woman  with  Bob.  What  he  said  was : 

"Mr.  Taxter,  pardon  my  intrusion,  but  your  friend,  Miss 
Summerlin,  promised —  Why,  Miss  Summerlin!  I  never 
dreamed  of  finding  you  here !  And  your  dear  mother !  How 
charmingly  you  are  both  looking.  Really,  it's  wonderful! 
You  remember,  Miss  April,  the  last  time  you  saw  me,  you 
promised  me  that  I  should  meet  Mr.  Taxter  as  soon  as  he 
landed,  but  I  waited  in  vain,  and  finally  I  took  the  liberty  of 
coming  to  see  him  myself.  I  found  out  from  your  old  camp 
your  present  address,  Mr.  Taxter.  I  didn't  stop  to  have 
my  name  sent  up,  but — if  you'll  allow  me  to  introduce  my 
self,  Mr.  Taxter,  I  am  Mr.  Clyde,  Hugo  Clyde.  Very  much 
at  your  service — but — I  hope  I'm  not  intruding." 

Nobody  said  anything.  Everybody  was  lost  in  the  clouds  of 
his  words.  He  had  filled  the  air  with  them  like  a  vocal  squid. 

Bob  let  go  the  door  and  woodenly  took  the  hand  that 
Clyde  held  out.  He  left  the  door  open.  April  had  never 
spoken  to  Bob  of  the  fellow  who  called  her  "Miss  April "  and 
her  mother  "dear." 

224 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

April  simply  could  not  speak,  either  to  rebuke  the  of 
fensive  Clyde  or  to  explain  him  to  Bob.  So  Clyde  began 
again: 

"You  see,  Mr.  Taxter,  I  presume  I  should  say  lieutenant 
— we've  all  heard  of  your  wonderful  exploits — but — well — 
Miss  April  was  asking  my  advice  about  investments.  I 
may  say  that  that  is  my  business — investment  securities. 
And  she  was  at  a  loss  where  to  put  her  money,  and  happened 
to  mention  that  you  would  probably  be  looking  about  for  a 
place  to  invest — I  believe  it  was  ten  thousand  dollars, 
wasn't  it?" 

"It  was,"  said  Bob,  dismally. 

The  imp  that  inhabited  April  skipped  back  into  the 
heart  whence  despair  had  banished  it.  She  could  not  help 
saying: 

"Mr.  Taxter  has  lost  half  his  money  and  all  his  heart." 

"Oh,  so  sorry!  or  should  I  say,  congratulations?"  chirped 
Clyde,  with  all  the  lovable  quality  of  an  English  sparrow 
at  daybreak. 

Bob  rolled  him  a  glance  that  suggested  his  willingness  to 
commit  murder  upon  him,  and  April,  taking  a  Grecian  delight 
in  following  high  tragedy  with  low  comedy,  said: 

"Mr.  Taxter  is  getting  ma'ied  this  afternoon.  Perhaps 
he'd  rather  have  you  for  his  best  man  than  his  broker." 

Clyde  understood  instantly,  and,  like  other  instant- 
understanders,  understood  all  wrong: 

"Oh,  I  see!  I  see!  I've  broken  in  on  a  bridal-party. 
You  told  me  that  Mr.  Taxter  had  a  margin  on  your  heart, 
and  would  probably  be  a  relative  by  marriage." 

This  was  punishment  enough  for  April's  levity.  She 
flushed  with  shame. 

"Nonsense!  I  said  no  such  thing.  Mr.  Taxter  is  marry 
ing  a  Miss  Yarmy,  from  Texas." 

Clyde  recovered  with  splendid  resilience: 

"Ah,  indeed!  Fine!  Fine!  I  wish  you  all  the  joy  in 
Texas.  I  should  be  delighted  to  serve  as  your  best  man,  if 
you  wish  me  to." 

"No,  thanks!"  said  Bob,  ominously. 

Clyde  turned  from  him  to  April  with  blithe  audacity: 
"That  means,  then,  Miss  April,  that  you  are  not  to  be  Mrs. 
Taxter — as  I  feared.  May  I — er — " 

225 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"You  may  not!"  said  April. 

Bob  still  stood  by  the  open  door.  Even  Clyde's  thick 
skin  felt  the  frost  forming,  and  he  said: 

"Well,  I  won't  detain  the  bridegroom.  But  I'll  call  on 
you  soon,  Miss  April — and  on  you,  dear  Mrs.  Summerlin. 
Good-by  all.  Bon  voyage,  Mr.  Taxter!" 

And  he  frisked  out. 

Bob  stared  at  April.  His  heart  was  still  hers  so  com 
pletely  that  he  was  ingenuous  enough  to  plead : 

"Promise  me  you  won't  marry  him,  April?" 

April  stared  at  him  in  an  amazement  that  he  misread  as  a 
rebuke  for  his  Mormonism.  He  blenched  and  apologized : 

"I  forgot.     Forgive  me!" 

He  had  not  yet  closed  the  door.  And  now  Kate  Yarmy 
blew  in  through  the  aperture  breezily. 

"Oh,  Bob!" 

She  was  going  to  add,  "The  parson's  on  the  job."  But 
she  saw  the  room  full  of  women.  And  she  felt  ambushed. 

She  checked  her  speech,  recognizing  Mrs.  Summerlin  and 
April  as  inveterate  enemies  with  a  nod,  and  looked  at  Mrs. 
Taxter,  whom  she  assumed  to  be  Bob's  mother,  with  a  stare 
of  mingled  dread  and  defiance. 

Bob  said:  "Miss  Yarmy,  let  me  present  you  to  my 
mother.  You  know  Mrs.  Summerlin  and  Miss  Summerlin." 

Kate  ignored  them  and  turned  to  Mrs.  Taxter  with  an 
effort  at  a  smile  that  faltered  away  before  the  chill  of  Mrs. 
Taxter's  gaze.  She  stammered: 

"I — I — as  we  say  in  Texas,  I  admiah  to  meet  you.  But 
I'm  afraid  you  won't  like  me." 

Mrs.  Taxter  tried  to  be  polite  at  least.  "Anybody  that  my 
boy  is  so  fond  of  must  be — must  be — " 

"Isn't  it  strange?"  Kate  broke  in,  nervously.  "Who 
could  believe  it?  Joe,  my  brotha — told  Bob — "  The 
unfamiliar  name  came  with  effort  from  her,  and  shocked  the 
bridegroom  almost  as  much  as  his  mother — "Joe  told  Bob 
that  we  had  to  rush  back  home  on  the  first  train,  and  Bob, 
the  dear  boy,  just  insisted  on  havin'  the  weddin'  at  once  so's 
he  could  go  along.  Didn't  you,  Bob?" 

"Yes,  Miss — yes,  dear." 

Mrs.  Taxter  observed,  "It's  a  little  sudden,  isn't  it?" 

"Oh,  isn't  it?"  Kate  agreed,  to  Mrs.  Taxter's  intense 

226 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

discomfort.  She  felt  a  sort  of  promiscuity  in  sharing  the 
same  phrase  with  this  hateful  and  hatefully  pretty  serpent. 
Kate  went  on,  "It  was  all  so  sudden  that  Joe — my  brotha — 
was  strongly  opposed  to  it." 

"He  was!"  said  Mrs.  Taxter,  with  a  sudden  interest  in  this 
sympathetic  brother. 

"Indeed  he  was!"  Kate  exclaimed.  "But  Bob  insisted. 
Didn't  you,  dea'?" 

"Yes — yes,  indeed!"  Bob  mumbled.  Every  man  has  his 
braveries  and  his  cowardices,  and  this  wearer  of  a  cross  of 
war  was  an  arrant  skulker  in  this  field  as  the  lone  man  and 
prize  of  battle  among  four  women.  He  took  to  his  heels 
with  a  feeble  excuse:  "I — I  haven't  begun  to  pack  yet.  If 
you'll  all  excuse  me  a  few  minutes." 

Before  he  could  be  seized  he  vanished  into  the  bedroom 
where  Zeb  and  Pansy  stared  at  him  as  if  he  were  the  dead 
walking.  They  had  made  little  progress  in  storing  his  things 
into  the  gaping  trunk,  and  he  scolded  them  with  a  vigor  he 
had  been  unable  to  display  in  the  other  room. 

He  looked  in  a  closet  for  his  morning-coat,  so  called  be 
cause  it  was  chiefly  worn  of  afternoons,  having  driven  the 
old  frock-coat  into  disrepute.  He  stared  at  it  for  some  time 
before  he  could  collect  enough  wits  for  its  recognition.  Then 
he  went  about,  gathering  black  socks  and  a  white  shirt,  as 
if  he  were  a  somnambulist.  He  carried  them  into  the  bath 
room,  which  was  the  only  dressing-room  he  had  left,  with  all 
this  throng  in  attendance.  He  felt  as  if  he  were  holding  a 
wake,  with  himself  the  corpse.  He  set  about  dressing  for  his 
own  obsequies  in  an  appropriate  mood. 

And  now  for  the  battle  of  the  women,  met  like  four  hungry 
female  jungle-cats  over  a  trapped  hartebeest — old  lioness, 
old  tigress,  and  tigress  cub,  and  young,  lithe  leopardess;  all 
relentless,  cunning,  patient. 

Kate  was  one  against  three,  but  she  had  certain  advantages 
that  she  would  not  hesitate  to  use.  But  what  gave  her  most 
unexpected  courage  was  the  sight  of  the  Taxter  necklace  lying 
on  the  table  where  Mrs.  Taxter  had  laid  it  when  Bob  pre 
vented  her  clasping  it  about  April's  neck. 

There  are  few  women  whom  the  sight  of  a  diamond  does 
not  quicken  and  intoxicate.  This  shimmering  Pleiad  of 

227 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

them  wakened  in  Kate  a  wanton  eagerness  that  had  goaded 
her  to  crime  before. 

With  a  husband,  an  honorable  name,  and  a  diamond  neck 
lace  as  her  quarry,  she  was  ready  to  match  wits  or  fangs  and 
claws  with  any  earthly  power,  peculiarly  ready  to  fight  with 
females  for  a  male. 


CHAPTER  IV 

T"*HERE  is  probably  no  pang  given  to  mortal  woman  to 
JL  bear  greater  than  yielding  her  son  to  another  woman. 
It  is  a  second  travail,  without  the  joy  of  gain — with  all  the 
grief  of  loss.  She  may  smother  her  cries,  but  there  are  tears 
running  back  into  her  heart. 

To  give  a  son  away  to  his  school  is  hard ;  to  see  his  ambi 
tion  becoming  his  second  love  is  hard;  to  devote  him  to  his 
country  is  a  kind  of  glorious  sorrow;  but  to  hand  him  over 
to  a  wife  is  downright  agony. 

In  the  first  place,  no  woman  could  possibly  be  good  enough 
for  him.  If  he  is  a  very  bad  boy,  the  woman  is  still  more 
under  suspicion,  for  then  she  ought  to  be  good  enough  to 
make  him  better  than  his  own  mother  could  make  him. 
And,  of  course,  if  she  did  that,  she  would  become  hateful 
beyond  hate. 

Bob  Taxter's  mother  was  very  mother.  She  loved  a  son 
with  a  Virginian  extravagance  of  tenderness  and  admira 
tion.  She  was  never  afraid  to  spoil  him  with  adulation.  She 
wanted  him  to  feel  that,  however  much  praise  outsiders 
might  lavish  on  him,  it  would  never  equal  what  he  had  had 
at  home  long  before. 

Mrs.  Taxter  had  accepted  the  prospect  that  April  would 
marry  Bob.  She  had  accepted  it  lightly  when  they  were 
children  and  far  from  the  fatal  day.  As  they  grew  older, 
their  quarrels  continued  unimportantly  and  amusingly 
childish.  She  loved  April,  and  she  respected  April's  people 
and  her  ancestry  and  their  ways.  April  had  displayed  all 
her  good  and  evil  traits  until  both  had  become  pleasant  with 
familiarity. 

Surrendering  Bob  to  April  would  not  be  really  surrender 
ing  him.  It  would  be  simply  a  continuance  of  the  sharing 
arrangement  that  she  and  April  had  kept  up  since  Bob  was 
a  little  boy  and  April  a  little  girl. 

But  now  Bob  was  going  to  do  one  of  those  terrific  things 

229 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

that  sons  do  to  their  mothers'  hearts  and  hopes.  He  was 
going  to  give  his  freedom,  his  career,  his  name,  his  love, 
his  lifelong  days  and  nights  into  the  monopoly  of  a  Miss 
Nobody  from  Nowhere. 

Mrs.  Taxter  had  despised  Kate  before  she  saw  her.  She 
loathed  her  at  first  inspection.  She  resented  her  the  more 
for  the  insult  of  beauty  added  to  the  injury  of  abduction. 

Then,  there  was  about  Kate,  her  features,  and  her  car 
nage,  too,  an  undisguised  voluptuousness  that  was  disgust 
ing,  an  effrontery.  It  horrified  Mrs.  Taxter  to  think  that 
her  son  could  have  been  influenced  by  it.  It  was  a  kind  of 
damnation,  and  she  felt  that  it  was  her  religious  duty  to  drive 
this  Lilith  out  of  Eden. 

When  a  religious  ardor  is  added  to  hostility  it  sanctifies 
every  trick;  it  grants  plenary  indulgence  in  advance  for  any 
atrocity. 

But  for  all  her  hatred,  Mrs.  Taxter  was  equally  beset  with 
paralyzing  fears.  What  weapons  has  a  mother  to  wield 
against  youth  and  prettiness,  passion  and  novelty  ?  She  has 
only  the  rusty  foils  that  have  hung  over  the  fireplace  and 
grown  brittle,  while  the  young  enemy  has  the  hot,  keen, 
flaming  swords  of  forbidden  Edens  challenging  to  enter 
prise;  the  fierce  bayonets  of  desire;  strange  siren  musics; 
enervating  clouds  of  perfumed  enchantments,  and  madden 
ing  bugle-calls  to  the  blood. 

It  has  been  eternally  decreed  that  the  mother  shall  be 
conquered  or  destroyed  who  ventures  out  on  this  field  of 
courtship  and  tries  to  drag  her  young  back  to  the  home  they 
have  outgrown. 

Mrs.  Taxter  was  a  lioness,  but  she  felt  old  and  awkward, 
and  she  could  not  trust  her  own  cub.  He  had  a  new  loyalty, 
and  he  would  not  thank  her  if  she  marred  her  adversary. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  hardly  more  than  a  witness.  She 
was  constrained  by  the  very  pride  in  her  daughter  that  this 
new-come  woman  outraged.  She  could  not  fight  for  Bob 
as  if  he  were  her  daughter's  last  hope  of  a  man. 

April  was  Kate's  superior  in  every  point  but  one.  She  had 
better  wits,  better  bravery,  more  physical  power.  If  she 
could  have  been  maddened  to  it  she  could  have  torn  Kate 
to  pieces  or  throttled  her  to  death  by  the  sheer  force  of  her 
splendid  muscles. 

230 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

But  she  wore  the  shackles  of  conventional  training.  She 
had  kept  her  claws  sheathed  so  long  that  they  had  lost  their 
spring.  As  for  her  fangs,  she  was  very  dainty  about  what 
she  set  her  teeth  in. 

She  was  quivering  with  primeval  instincts,  but  the  inhibi 
tions  of  good  breeding  held  her  in  check. 

Kate,  however,  had  fought  from  childhood  with  tooth 
and  nail.  She  had  torn  out  other  women's  hair  in  tufts, 
scratched  constables,  and  bitten  policemen  till  their  knuckles 
bled.  That  very  plain-clothes  man,  McCann,  who  had 
warned  her  and  Joe  to  leave  New  York,  still  carried  a  scar 
from  Kate's  teeth.  She  had  tried  to  chew  his  right  thumb 
off  once  in  a  scrimmage,  and  he  had  had  to  put  her  "out" 
with  his  left  fist  before  he  went  out  with  the  pain.  He  rather 
admired  her  for  her  grit,  but  he  wanted  no  more  battles 
with  her. 

April  did  not  know  of  Kate's  indescribable  past,  but  she 
would  not  have  been  surprised  at  any  part  of  it.  She  had  a 
woman's  flair  for  another  woman's  evil  propensities,  and  had 
abhorred  Kate  from  the  first  glimpse  of  her. 

She  would  as  soon  have  bitten  or  scratched  a  hyena  as 
attempted  violence  on  Kate.  She  hoped  only  to  bluff  her 
away.  She  did  not  know  General  Grant's  watchword,  "Re 
member  that  your  enemy  is  always  as  afraid  of  you  as  you 
are  of  your  enemy." 

She  did  not  know  that  Kate  also  was  suffering  from  inhi 
bitions.  Kate  was  sniffing  the  catnip  of  respectability.  She 
wanted  to  revel  in  it.  She  realized  that  any  physical  damage 
she  might  do  to  her  three  enemies  would  undo  her  more  than 
flight.  If  she  fled,  Bob  might  follow;  but  if  she  fought,  he 
might  join  his  own  family. 

She  held  him  by  a  frail  cord.  To  insult  his  mother  or  lac 
erate  the  beauty  of  his  April  would  immediately  set  him 
free  from  any  sense  of  obligation. 

And  so  the  battle  over  this  prey,  like  so  many  wild  and 
tame  animal  encounters,  resolved  itself  into  a  sham  battle 
of  circling  and  prowling,  feinting  and  retreating,  fierce 
grimacing  and  back-arching,  and  no  blood  shed.  The  women 
hated  one  another  venomously,  but  were  more  afraid  of 
wounding  than  of  being  wounded. 

There  was  a  prolonged  silence  after  Bob  left  the  room  be- 

16  231 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

fore  anybody  spoke.  Mrs.  Taxter  opened  her  lips  several 
times,  but  every  impulsive  outburst  was  stifled  by  a  second 
thought.  At  last  she  appealed  to  April  to  open  the  battle: 

"April,  reason  with  her!    Plead  with  her!" 

As  the  champion  of  Bob's  mother,  April  could  fight  with 
better  grace.  She  began  to  parley : 

"Miss  Yarmy,  can't  we  prevail  on  you  to — to  give  up  this 
mad  plan?" 

'Why  should  I?" 

'At  least  postpone  it!" 

'Just  to  oblige  you?" 

'No;  for  the  sake  of  his  mother." 

'I'm  fond  of  him,  too." 

'  But  he  doesn't — he  can't  love  you." 

'Did  he  tell  you  that?" 

'No,  but— " 

'  I  didn't  think  he  was  the  sort  of  a  man  to  talk  about  his 
wife." 

'  You  re  not  his  wife !" 

'But  I'm  going  to  be  inside  of  an  hour!" 

'In  spite  of  his  not  loving  you?" 

'Where  do  you  get  that  stuff?  Of  course  he  loves  me. 
You  saw  it  yourself.  It  made  you  so  jealous  you  wanted  to 
kill  me,  didn't  it?" 

April  whitened  with  the  shame  of  this. 

Kate  grew  more  cruel.  "He  didn't  want  to  tell  you  how 
he  loved  me.  He  never  told  you  how  he  tried  to  kiss  me, 
did  he  ?  Of  course  not.  He  did,  though — lots  of  times.  But 
I  wouldn't  let  him.  Not  that  he  isn't  fond  of  you.  He  al 
ways  spoke  well  of  you — as  a  friend.  But  he's  known  you 
too  long,  girlie,  to  love  you.  A  man  don't  want  to  marry  a 
girl  he  grew  up  with.  I'm  not  in  your  class.  I  know  that 
without  your  telling  me.  But  I'm  something  new.  I'm 
different  to  him.  And  so  is  he  to  me.  And  maybe  that's 
why  I  love  him." 

April  lifted  her  downcast  head  at  this  with  an  eagerness 
that  revealed  her  real  love  for  Bob.  "  But  do  you  love  him  ? ' ' 

"Better  than  you  ever  did !"  Kate  cried.  "I'd  go  through 
hell  for  him.  I'm  goin'  through  it  now,  fighting  you  all. 
But  I'm  going  to  get  him  in  spite  of  you.  And  I'll  be  a  good 
wife  to  him,  too!" 

232 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

Mrs.  Taxter  made  an  Impatient  gesture  of  protest  at  the 
possibility  of  such  a  woman's  being  a  good  wife  to  her  son. 
Kate  saw  the  motion  and  turned  to  Mrs.  Taxter,  accusing 
April. 

"Don't  you  forget  that  she  played  fast  and  loose  with 
him  first.  She  threw  him  over  before  he  ever  suggested 
marryin'  me." 

"That  isn't  true!"  Mrs.  Taxter  retorted,  and  then  turned 
to  April.  "Is  it,  April?" 

April  confessed,  "We  did  have  a  little  dispute." 

Kate  broke  in.  "And  it  was  over  me!"  She  whirled  on 
April.  "You  gave  him  back  his  ring,  too,  didn't  you?  I 
saw  you  when  you  did."  She  whirled  on  Mrs.  Taxter. 
"Just  because  Bob  wanted  to  buy  a  share  in  ouah  oil  prop- 
aty.  She  tried  to  prevent  him.  She  got  so  mad  at  him  she 
flung  down  his  ring  and  told  him  to  invest  that,  too.  Some 
how,  the  five  thousand  dolla's  Bob  had  has  disappeared. 
Nobody  knows  how.  I'm  not  saying  she  took  it,  but  I'd 
like  to  hear  what  she'd  say  if  the  money  had  vanished  in 
my  flat  like  it  did  in  hers.  Ha !  She  wouldn't  say  a  thing 
about  me,  oh  no!  Anyway,  she  ripped  off  his  ring  and  gave 
it  up.  And  he  put  it  in  his  pocket.  I  reckon  he's  got 
it  now." 

April  knew  that  he  had  it.  She  had  seen  him  juggling  it. 
She  was  rash  enough  to  say,  "He  didn't  give  it  to  you, 
though." 

"  Not  yet,  but  he  will.  Or  you  can  have  it  if  you  want  it. 
But  you  can't  have  him!"  Kate  felt  so  victorious  that  she 
ventured  a  little  crass  patronage,  "Come  on,  be  a  good 
sport;  take  your  medicine."  She  even  put  her  hand  out 
toward  April's  arm. 

April  recoiled  with  a  shudder  of  contaminated  aristocracy 
and  gasped: 

"Please  don't!" 

Kate  laughed  with  robust  bourgeoisie,  but  she  was  hurt. 
"That  pride  of  yours  won't  get  you  anything.  It's  lost 
you  Bob  already.  You  better  can  that  high-and-mighty 
business." 

Even  Mrs.  Summerlin  grew  ferocious  at  the  sight  of  April 
being  lectured  by  this  upstart.  She  snapped: 

"Young  woman!" 

233 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Old  lady!"  Kate  mocked.  This  touched  springs  of  in 
stinctive  wrath  and  April  nearly  sprang  upon  her  then. 

But  even  Kate  deplored  the  plebeiance  she  could  not  sup 
press.  She  hastened  to  withdraw  it. 

"I  beg  your  pardon.  I'm  a  little  excited.  You  see,  I 
newa  was  married  befo'.  I  know  how  you-all  hate  me, 
but—" 

Mrs.  Taxter  would  not  let  her  presume  upon  even  so  much 
respect  as  hate  implied.  She  interposed,  "  I  don't  know  you 
well  enough  to  hate  you — yet." 

Kate  acknowledged  the  "yet"  with  a  bitter  laugh:  "I 
get  you.  But  don't  lose  sight  of  one  thing,  ladies."  She 
wished  she  had  not  called  them  "ladies."  "If  I  was  an 
angel  from  heaven — which  I'm  not,  by  a  long  shot — you'd 
hate  me  for  takin'  yo'  son  away  from  you.  Yo'  own  motha- 
in-law  must  have  hated  you,  Mrs.  Taxta.  And  I'll  bet  you 
hated  her.  It's  only  natural.  If  I  have  a  son,  I'll  want  to 
poison  the  woman  who  marries  him,  whoewa  she  is." 

Mrs.  Taxter  almost  swooned  at  the  thought  of  being 
grandmother  to  a  son  of  this  woman's.  Kate  went  on, 
"  If  Miss  Summalin  had  have  married  Bob,  you'd  have  hated 
her  just  as  much  as  me." 

"Newa!"     Mrs.  Taxter  threw  her  arm  about  April. 
"Oh  yes,  you  would!    But  she's  not  goin'  to  marry  him, 
so  you  can  stay  friends." 

Mrs.  Taxter  took  her  arm  from  April. 
Mrs.  Summerlin  tried  the  effect  of  prayer: 
"  Miss  Yahmy,  the  thing  Mrs.  Taxta  objects  to  most  is  the 
suddenness  of  it  all.     Don't  you  suppose  you  could  put  off 
the  wedding  for — a  few  days,  at  least,  till  the  announcements 
could  be  given  out  and — and  a  pretty  ceremony  arranged 
in  a  chu'ch?" 

"Oh,  Bob  insisted  on  the  chu'ch.  But  I've  arranged  for 
it.  This  isn't  any  shot-gun  affair  in  a  justice-of-the-peace's 
office,  you  know.  You-all  are  very  cordially  invited  to  come 
daown  to  the  Little  Chu'ch  Raound  the  CXwna." 

"But  Mrs.  Taxta  doesn't  belong  to  t._t  chu'ch,"  Mrs. 
Summerlin  pleaded.  "Wouldn't  you  ratha  have  a  beautiful 
wedding  in  the  old  chu'ch  down  in  Virginia?" 

"I'd  just  love  it,  but  you  see  I've  got  to  go  to  Texas  this 
evenin'.  I've  just  got  to." 

234 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

Mrs.  Summerlin  was  tenacious.  She  felt  that  she  was 
succeeding  a  little.  "Then  why  not  postpone  the  wedding 
till  you  can  come  back?" 

Kate  tossed  her  head  in  gay  scorn  of  this  subterfuge. 
"And  leave  Bob  alone  with  you-all?  Why,  you'd  have  us 
divo'ced  befo'  we  were  ma'ied." 

Mrs.  Taxter  took  up  this  challenge  with  a  new  gentleness. 
"No,  no!  My  son's  happiness  is  all  I  have  to  live  for.  .  If 
he  wants  you  for  his  wife,  I'll  do  all  I  can  to  make  you  both 
happy.  If  you'll  just  call  yourselves  engaged  for  a  while, 
and  then  come  home  to  the  plantation  and  be  ma'ied 
from  there,  you  shall  have  the  most  beautiful  wedding  I 
can  arrange,  and  no  end  of  wedding-presents;  and  my  gift 
will  be — this." 

She  took  up  the  crumpled  necklace  and  spread  it  out  in 
the  air  in  all  its  resplendence.  The  light  of  the  jewels 
seemed  to  be  mirrored  in  Kate's  flashing  eyes. 

"What  is  it?    A — a  family  heirloom?" 

"  Yes.     It  is  always  worn  by  the  Taxta  brides." 

"Thank  you  ewa  so  much!"  And  she  put  her  hand  out 
for  it.  Mrs.  Taxter  recoiled  from  her  as  April  had  done. 
Kate  pressed  her  claim  with  miserly  greed:  "It's  mine, 
ain't  it  ?  For  I'm  to  be  the  next  Taxta  bride — ain't  I,  Bob?" 

This  to  Bob,  who  put  his  head  in  at  the  door  just  at  the 
wrong  moment.  In  the  sound-proof  bathroom  where  he 
had  been  scouring  himself  and  putting  on  fresh  linen  for  his 
honeymoon,  he  had  wondered  what  havoc  the  women  who 
disputed  his  possession  had  made  of  one  another. 

He  had  put  his  head  once  or  twice  into  the  room  where 
Pansy  and  Zeb  tiptoed  about  like  pallbearers,  but  had  heard 
no  shrieks  or  thuds  from  the  living-room.  At  last  his  curi 
osity  drove  him  to  whipping  into  a  bathrobe  and  going  to 
the  door.  He  interpolated  his  head  in  time  to  receive  Kate's 
appeal  for  corroboration.  He  was  rather  surprised  to  see  all 
four  women  still  alive  and  calm,  with  their  hair  and  clothes 
unrent  and  no  visible  marks  of  finger-nails. 

Kate's  question  struck  him  as  rather  belated  and  unneces 
sary,  but  he  could  only  answer: 

"You  were;  the  last  I  heard." 

"But  you're  not  dressed!  We'll  newa  get  the  license 
unless  you  rush." 

235 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

He  answered,  as  peevishly  as  if  he  were  already  wed: 

"I'm  rushin',  but  I've  got  to  get  my  clothes  on,  haven't  I? 
Mother,  you'll  meet  us  at  the  church,  won't  you?  You 
know  where  it  is,  don't  you?" 

"I  can  find  it,  I  reckon,"  his  mother  sighed,  and  gave  up 
the  battle.  When  Kate  said,  "But  the  necklace — do  I  get 
the  necklace?"  Mrs.  Taxter  felt  that  diamonds  and  like 
vanities  were  such  nothings  compared  with  the  theft  of  her 
son  that  she  lost  all  interest  in  them.  She  said,  "I'll  bring 
them  with  me." 

"  You  might  be  late  or  miss  the  place,"  Kate  urged,  shame 
less  in  her  lust  for  the  gems.  "Why  don't  you  give  them  t» 
me  naow?" 

Mrs.  Taxter  made  a  last  feeble  struggle.  "The  necklace 
is  so  old  it  will  fall  apaht.  I  was  going  to  take  it  to  a 
jeweler's  to  have  it  reset." 

"There's  a  fine  jewelry-sto'  in  Houston,"  Kate  persisted. 

"Oh,  ve'y  well!"  She  was  about  to  pass  the  sparkling 
concatenation  over  to  the  exigent  bride,  but  she  feared  that 
it  would  break  and  scatter.  She  said  to  Bob,  whose  face  was 
still  stuck  in  the  door  crevice  like  a  stupid  moon:  "They 
ought  to  be  wrapped  up.  See  if  you  haven't  a  box  for  them, 
Bob." 

She  poured  the  fortune  into  the  hand  he  thrust  through 
the  door.  She  preferred  that  if  they  must  be  wasted  on  the 
Yarmy  creature,  Bob  should  have  the  credit,  and  the  blame, 
for  the  gift. 

Bob  turned  and  called  on  Zeb:  "Find  a  box  for  these  and 
wrap  them  up.  Be  mighty  careful." 

He  decanted  the  liquid  into  Zeb's  liver-colored  palms,  and 
turned  back  to  urge  his  mother  and  Kate  to  be  gone.  He  had 
an  idea : 

"What  about  the  ring?  You  have  to  put  on  a  ring,  don't 
you?" 

"  It's  still  being  done,"  said  his  mother. 

"But  I  haven't  one,"  Bob  said,  half  hoping  that  this 
might  render  the  whole  ordeal  impossible.  But  Kate  was 
resourceful : 

"  I'll  run  out  and  get  one,  and  slip  it  to  you  in  the  subway. 
You're  to  meet  Joe  and  me  there — he's  waiting  naow,  I'll 
bet.  Give  me  the  necklace  and  I'll  hunt  up  the  ring." 

236 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

"Wait  till  I  get  you  the  money,"  said  Bob. 

Kate  answered,  jubilantly:  "What's  youahs  is  mine,  and 
what's  mine's  ma  own,  from  naow  on.  I'll  buy  the  ring  and 
swap  it  for  the  necklace.  Where  is  it  at?" 

Bob  turned  back  to  Zeb,  who  had  scurried  about,  found 
a  long,  lean  box  of  lawn  ties,  emptied  it,  laid  the  necklace 
in,  and  turned  to  ask  Pansy  to  hand  him  a  piece  of  heavy 
wrapping-paper  from  the  floor. 

Necklaces  have  a  serpentine  gift  for  squirming  free  of 
any  confinement.  As  Zeb  turned  and  unwittingly  opened 
the  box  a  little,  the  necklace  glided  out  and  slid  down  the 
back  of  a  tufted  chair  into  the  crevice  between  the  seat  and 
the  arm. 

Zeb  closed  the  box,  rolled  it  up  in  the  paper  Pansy  handed 
him,  demanded  a  string,  tied  a  few  sorry  knots  in  it,  and 
handed  it  over  to  Bob  with  deep  regret. 

Bob  passed  it  through  the  door  into  Kate's  clutching 
hand.  She  was  so  enraptured  in  the  possession  that  she  fled 
lest  some  one  should  get  it  away  from  her: 

"Good-by,  all.    Hurry  up,  Bob!" 

April  wanted  to  laugh  at  her  haste  and  to  weep  at  her 
victory.  But  she  simply  wreathed  an  elegy  into  a  smile  and 
murmured  to  Bob:  " I'll  be  running  along  now,  Bob.  Good- 
by!  I  hope  you'll  be  mighty  happy.  You  know  that!" 

Bob  shook  his  head  with  a  rueful  skepticism,  put  his  arm 
through  the  door,  and  wrung  April's  dear  old  hand.  Mrs. 
Summerlin  simply  nodded  farewell,  her  eyes  abrim  with 
tears.  Bob  did  not  dare  invite  her  or  April  to  the  wedding. 
He  wished  to  be  rid  of  his  mother,  too. 

"I'll  see  you  again,  mother — at  the  church.  The  man  at 
the  desk  down-stairs  will  tell  you  where  it  is.  I  don't  know 
exactly  myself." 

His  mother  wailed  the  familiar  phrase  we  use  so  incessantly 
with  such  heedless  incongruity,  "All  right!" 


CHAPTER  V 

BOB  watched  them  close  the  door  after  them.  Then  he 
turned  and  went  back  to  the  bathroom  to  shave  and 
finish  his  self-valetry.  He  was  surprised  to  see  that  he  had 
left  his  roll  of  money  on  the  glass  shelf,  alongside  his  tube  of 
shaving-cream.  He  was  still  more  surprised  to  find  it  still 
there.  He  counted  over  the  rest  of  his  cash.  Besides  the  half 
of  his  legacy,  he  had  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars. 

Pansy,  realizing  that  Mrs.  Summerlin  had  gone,  was  lin 
gering  for  a  last  outburst.  She  glared  at  the  bathroom  door. 
"Oh,  the  young  scoun'rel  that  he  is!" 

"Don't  abuse  ma  boss!"  said  Zeb.  "That  boy's  got  the 
tightest  heart  and  the  wrongest  haid  ewa  a  man  had.  No 
body  newa  could  do  nothin'  with  them  Taxtas  when  they 
get  them  shiftless  shiftlery  notions  in  they  minds." 

"Ma  po'  Miss  April!"  Pansy  moaned. 

"And  po'  you,  and  po'  me,  and  po'  ewabody!  Oh,  this 
weddin'  has  got  to  cease  ef  I  has  to  cease  it  maseff." 

Pansy  sniffed.  "You  look  like  what's  goin'  to  cease  some- 
thin'!"" 

"It's  gotta  be  did;  it's  gwineter  be  did!" 

"How  you  gwine  did  it?" 

"I  d'know,  but  ef  prayin'  like  a  camel  an'  lyin'  like  the 
devil  can  do  it,  I'll  do  it.  Ef  you  got  any  infloonce,  Pansy, 
you  pray  the  Lawd  to  miss  him  that  ol'  train." 

Pansy  was  a  practical  believer.  "Ef  you  was  lookin'  for 
to  miss  him  a  train,  betta  turn  back  that  clock,  and  that 
watch,  too." 

Zeb  hailed  the  plan  with  joy.  "Now  you's  ma  Pansy! 
Three  haids  is  betta  than  one."  He  ran  to  the  mantel  where 
the  hotel  clock  scowled,  opened  the  case  and  pushed  the  hands 
back  an  hour  recklessly  as  he  murmured:  "Goo'-by,  Pansy 
Blossom.  I'll  drap  roun'  and  see  you  lata!" 

Pansy  went  to  the  door  and  growled:  "If  you  don't  miss 

238 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

him  that  train,  don't  you  newa  do  come  roun'.     No  matta 
how  late  will  be  too  soon." 

Pansy  closed  the  door  and  left  Zeb  to  his  own  resources. 
He  felt  terribly  outnumbered  by  the  fiends  of  circumstance.' 
He  had  never  felt  so  old  and  stupid  and  timid.  He  had  noth 
ing  in  his  favor  but  a  recklessness  of  consequences.  To  be 
beaten  and  cursed  would  not  matter,  provided  he  could  de 
vote  himself  to  the  salvation  of  his  young  master.  His  was 
the  spirit  of  the  higher  obedience  which  prefers  many  small 
disobediences  to  a  servile  connivance  in  a  bad  result. 

He  hobbled  in  his  negroid  way  to  the  bureau  where  Bob 
had  left  his  watch.  Zeb  turned  back  the  hand  half  an  hour. 

Bob  popped  out  of  the  bathroom  just  a  second  too  late  to 
catch  him  at  it.  Bob  spoke  through  a  lathery  shaving- 
brush  dancing  about  his  cheeks : 

"  That  trunk  of  mine.  Send  it  to  the  station  right  away — 
get  a  special  expressman!" 

"Yassa!"  said  Zeb,  limping  telephoneward. 

Bob  called  after  him:  "And  get  the  rest  of  the  things  in. 
If  the  porter  can't  get  it  to  the  station,  you'll  have  to  take 
it  in  a  taxi." 

"Yassa!"  Zeb  called  into  the  telephone:  "Gimme  the 
po'ta.  .  .  .  This  you,  Mistoo  Po'ta?  This  Mistoo  Taxta's 
room.  I  want  a  'spressman  right  this  minute — a  'spressman 
for  a  yalla  trunk  about  so  long.  Do  I  get  him?  You  come 
a-runnin'  for  the  trunk." 

Bob  came  out  of  the  bathroom  again..  "Is  he  coming?" 
Zeb  nodded.  ' '  Don't  get  things  mixed  now.  Put  everything 
in  except  my  black  clothes.  I'll  wear  those." 

"Yassa!  You'll  sholy  need  yo'  black  clo'es.  Is  these 
them?" 

"Yes.  Leave  them  out,  and  everything  else  goes  in  the 
trunk — except  what  goes  in  my  suit-case  to  wear  on  the  train 
— pajamas  and  linen  and  things.  I'll  pack  that  myself  and 
you  can  meet  me  at  the  station  with  it." 

"Ain't  I  goin'  to  see  yo'  weddin'?" 

"No." 

"Us  Taxtas  usurally  goes  to  our  folks's  weddin's,"  Zeb 
pleaded,  cherishing  a  vague  idea  that  he  might,  as  a  last 
resort,  forbid  the  ceremony  to  proceed — or  steal  the  parson 
— or  something. 

239 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"You  can  see  my  next  wedding,"  Bob  snapped,  as  he  went 
back  to  his  mirror  with  his  razor. 

"May  it  come  soon!"  Zeb  muttered. 

He  had  an  inspiration  that  thrilled  him  with  its  high 
handed  impudence.  He  picked  up  Bob's  black  suit,  also  the 
blue  serge  which  he  had  laid  out  to  carry  in  the  suit-case, 
and  spread  them  both  in  the  trunk. 

He  stuffed  in  with  them  the  patent-leather  shoes  and 
everything  else  the  trunk  would  hold,  including  an  over 
coat.  He  kept  peeking  into  the  bathroom  to  see  if  Bob 
were  watching,  but  he  was  engrossed  in  his  daily  battle 
with  a  patch  of  cross-grained  stubble  that  grew  beneath  his 
left  jawbone. 

The  porter  now  rapped  on  the  door  leading  to  the  freight- 
elevator.  Zeb  closed  the  trunk,  locked  it,  pocketed  the  keys, 
and  dragged  the  trunk  to  the  door,  which  he  opened. 

The  porter  yanked  the  trunk  to  one  end,  fastened  a  claim- 
check  on  the  handle,  and  asked: 

"What  station?" 

Zeb  felt  quite  sure,  but  not  absolutely.  He  went  to  the 
bathroom  and  asked,  in  a  low  voice: 

"Masta  Bob,  what  station  you  say  that  ol'  trunk  goin'  to 
— the  Gran'  Central?" 

"No,  you  idiot — the  Pennsylvania!" 

"Yassa!" 

He  hurried  to  the  door,  where  the  porter  said,  "What 
station  did  he  say — Penn — " 

"No,  you —  He  say  the  Gran'  Central.  You  take  that  to 
that  Gran'  Central  the  fastest  you  kin!" 

"O.  K.     And  there's  the  claim-check." 

"And  there's  half  a  dolla'  for  speed." 

Zeb  pocketed  the  claim-check  and  closed  the  door,  leaning 
against  it  and  looking  upward,  white-eyed,  as  if  expecting  a 
lightning  to  blast  him  for  his  treachery. 

As  he  staggered  across  the  room  to  pack  the  suit-case,  his 
eye  was  caught  by  the  little  pool  of  diamonds  in  the  big 
armchair.  He  went  to  it  in  amazement,  stooped  down,  and 
lifted  up  the  necklace  with  awe,  talking  to  it  softly : 

"What's  you-all  doin'  thah?  How  you  git  outen  that  ol' 
box?  You  don't  like  them  Yahmys  any  better  'n  what  I  do, 
does  you?  Well,  the  Lawd  done  this,  not  me.  That  means 

240 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

He's  right  with  me,  and  mebbe  Him  and  I  goin*  do  some 
mo'  miracles." 

He  wondered  where  he  could  help  the  Lord  to  hide  it.  His 
wandering  eyes  caught  the  glint  of  the  vacuum-cleaner  con 
tainer  in  the  corner  of  the  room. 

Casting  another  glance  into  the  bathroom,  he  saw  that 
Bob's  face  was  buried  in  a  hot,  wet  towel.  So  he  ran  hastily, 
lifted  the  lid  of  the  container,  and  spilled  the  Taxter  diamonds 
into  the  rubbish  where  Bob's  first  five  thousand  dollars  still 
slept. 

He  had  just  set  the  lid  back  when  Bob  charged  out  of  the 
bathroom,  very  smooth  of  cheek,  but  greatly  rumpled  in 
temper.  He  glanced  at  his  watch  and  gave  a  gasp  of  relief. 
He  had  shaved  in  a  good  deal  less  than  no  time  at  all.  But 
he  was  too  excited  to  consider  the  paradox. 

He  kicked  his  slippers  toward  Zeb,  who  was  puttering  at 
the  suit-case. 

"Put  those  in  the  suit-case  and  hand  me  my  black-silk 
socks." 

Zeb  looked  everywhere  for  the  black-silk  socks.  Then  he 
stood  trembling. 

"What  kind  of  socks  was  them  black  silks?" 

"Black  silk,  you  poor  imbecile!" 

Zeb  cowered  in  readiness  to  be  smashed  with  some  missile 
as  he  faltered: 

"  I  reckon  I  done  put  them  ol'  socks  in  that  ol'  trunk!" 

Bob  shot  up  like  a  geyser,  "My  God!  I  told  you  to  leave 
out  the  black  things." 

"  I'm  mighty  so'y.     I  must  'a'  got  you  all  wrong." 
'Where  are  the  brown  ones,  then?     I'll  have  to  wear 
brown  ones — and  with  my  morning-coat — awf ul !    Where  are 
they?" 

Zeb  found  the  brown  ones,  to  his  surprise.  He  had  over 
looked  them.  He  handed  them  to  Bob  from  as  great  a  dis 
tance  as  possible. 

Bob  shoved  his  feet  into  them  and  locked  his  garters  on. 
"Now  my  black  shoes!" 

"Black  shoes ? ' '  Zeb  echoed.     ' ' The  shiny  ones ? " 

"Yes." 

"In  the  trunk!" 

" Oh,  my  G—    Where  is  it?" 

241 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"The  trunk ?    Where's  the  trunk ?" 

"Yes!" 

"Done  gone!" 

"Call  it  back!" 

Zeb  went  to  the  door  and  looked  out.  If  the  porter  had 
been  there  Zeb  would  have  denied  his  eyes,  but  the  little 
back  hall  was  empty. 

"Not  in  sight." 

"Telephone  the  porter!" 

Zeb  went  to  the  telephone  very  slowly.  To  his  horror, 
the  Central  answered  at  once,  but  Zeb  kept  whacking  the 
hook  and  shouting,  "Hello!"  while  she  howled  back  at  him, 
"Order,  please!" 

He  hung  up  the  receiver  in  despair  and  uttered  a  phrase 
very  much  in  vogue  at  the  time : 

"Sence  the  waw  the  telephome  suwice  is  jest  on- 
speakable!" 

The  Central  rang  the  bell  and  Zeb  said:  "Hello!  Is  that 
you?  Whah  you  bin  at  all  this  time?  Gimme  the  po'ta!" 
When  the  porter  answered  Zeb  ignored  him  as  long  as  he 
dared,  then  asked  for  the  trunk.  To  his  delight  it  had  left 
the  hotel. 

Bob  was  fuming  with  helpless  wrath.  "I'd  flay  you  alive 
if  I  had  time.  Now  I've  got  to  wear  brown  shoes  at  my 
wedding." 

In  the  words  of  the  cartoonists,  "The  worst  was  yet  to 
come."  Zeb  realizing  this,  and  wondering  what  would  be 
left  of  him  in  the  hour  of  wrath,  insinuated: 

"Hadn't  you  betta  put  off  the  weddin'  till  you  get  some 
shiny  shoes?" 

"Shut  up,  and  put  the  buttons  in  my  shirt.  No,  find  my 
top-hat.  No,  get  the  shirt  fixed.  I'll  look  at  the  hat." 

He  ran  to  the  hat-box  while  Zeb  took  the  pins  out  of 
the  shirt.  He  expressed  another  familiar  thought  of  the 
day: 

"  I  wonda  where  they  git  the  time  to  put  all  these  pins  in 
these  yere  shirts." 

When  the  pins  were  out  he  took  his  time  about  finding 
the  buttons.  He  put  the  cuff-buttons  in  so  that  the  cuffs 
were  turned  the  wrong  way,  and  when  the  impatient  Bob 
seized  the  shirt  and  forced  his  way  into  its  creaking  interior 

242 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

he  found  the  cuffs  protruding  foolishly  from  his  wrists.  He 
ripped  the  shirt  off  with  wild  profanity.  He  fixed  the  but 
tons  himself,  muttering  at  Zeb  so  balefully  that  Zeb  protested : 

"  Masta  Bob,  you  goin'  git  me  rattled  in  a  minute." 

"You're  going  to  get  your  teeth  rattled  in  a  minute," 
Bob  raged.  The  day  of  beating  slaves  had  gone  long  before 
Bob's  birth,  but  the  language  still  remained  a  part  of  the 
idiom. 

Zeb  took  up  the  silk  hat  that  Bob  had  bought  to  wear 
to  the  theater  with  April.  Its  sheen  was  broken  here  and 
there,  and  Zeb  began  to  turn  it  on  his  sleeve. 

Whether  intentionally  or  not,  he  rubbed  it  the  wrong  way 
and  turned  its  gloss  to  fuzz  before  Bob  noted  it  and  emitted 
another  roar.  Zeb  was  no  Ajax,  but  he  was  certainly  defying 
the  lightning. 

Bob  rose  and  snatched  the  hat  from  Zeb  and  gazed  at  it 
dismally.  He  had  been  proud  of  his  appearance  in  that  hat, 
but  the  slight  reversal  of  the  pile  made  it  ridiculous. 

"Call  the  valet  and  ask  him  to  iron  it!"  he  commanded. 
Zeb  went  to  the  telephone.  "  No,  there  isn't  time.  Ask  him 
to  bring  down  a  hot  iron  and  iron  it  here.  And  that  reminds 
me! — Good  Lord,  I  sent  my  evening  clothes  to  him  this 
morning  to  be  pressed.  Tell  him  to  rush  them  down  here 
this  minute.  I'll  have  to  take  them  in  the  suit-case." 

Zeb  waited  patiently.  Time  was  of  the  essence  of  his 
conspiracy.  He  asked,  with  amiable  impudence: 

"Any  otha  little  messages  for  that  ol'  valet?" 

Bob  gave  him  a  glare  like  a  whiplash  and  Zeb  turned 
quickly  to  the  telephone: 

"  Gimme  the  valet,  please.  .  .  .  Is  that  you,  Mistoo  Valet? 
Mistoo  Taxta  desiahs  a  hat  hot — I  mean  a  hot  hat  i'on — 
don't  you  know — a  i'on  to  i'on  a  hat — yassa,  a  hat  i'on — also 
where's  ouah  dress  clo'es  you  took  often  us  this  mawnin'? 
We  gotta  have  them  clo'es  this  minute.  What's  that? 
Wait  a  minute!" 

He  turned  to  Bob  to  say,  "Valet  say  he  got  no  hat  i'on 
hot  and  yo'  clo'es  cain't  be  raidy  for  a  half-houah  yit." 

"O  Lord!  O  Lord!"  Bob  groaned.  "You'll  have  to 
pack  them  and  send  them  to  me.  I'll  tell  you  the  address  at 
the  railroad  station." 

"Is  you  goin'  dig  oil-wells  in  a  dress-soot?"  Zeb  asked. 

243 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Telephone  the  office  to  make  out  my  bill  and  send  it  up 
right  away." 

Zeb  struggled  with  this  message  as  Bob  struggled  with  his 
shirt  again  and  tucked  the  tails  in  place.  Then  he  wandered 
about,  looking  for  his  black  trousers. 

Zeb's  eyes  wandered  from  the  telephone  to  the  window. 
He  wondered  whether  it  would  be  safer  to  take  a  flying  leap 
into  space  or  to  wait  for  Bob  to  express  his  feelings  when  he 
learned  the  incredible  truth.  He  was  in  no  hurry  to  explain 
to  Bob  that  his  search  was  vain.  As  Zeb  finished  his  tele 
phoning,  Bob  demanded: 

'Where  in  hell  are  my  trousers?" 

'Yo'  trousas?    Is  you  lookin'  to  wear  trousas — I  mean 
what  trousas  was  you  lookin'  to  wear?" 
'My  black  ones,  of  course." 
'Yo'  black  t-trousousas  ?" 
'Yes!!  you  black  scoundrel!" 
'They  is  with  yo'  otha  black  things." 
'Not  in  the  trunk?" 
'In  the  trunk!" 

Zeb  hastily  stepped  into  the  living-room  and  closed  the 
door.  The  language  and  the  things  Bob  threw  crashed  against 
it.  Then  Bob,  in  a  frenzy,  wrenched  the  door  open  and 
raised  his  hand  to  strike. 

If  Zeb  had  been  younger  and  stronger  he  would  have  been 
pulverized.  But  Bob  could  no  more  drive  his  fist  into  that 
face  of  unresisting  adoration  than  he  could  have  kicked  a 
dog  cringing  at  his  feet. 

His  wrath  flowed  back  into  his  heart  and  he  dropped  into 
a  chair,  groaning: 

"You've  done  for  me,  Zeb!" 

Zeb  was  silently  thanking  Heaven  for  saving  him  from  the 
beating  he  had  counted  on  as  part  of  the  cost  of  victory. 
To  have  won  the  triumph  without  a  wound  was  beyond 
belief. 

But  his  trust  in  the  favor  of  Heaven  received  a  terrific 
jolt  when  he  heard  Bob's  next  words : 

"And  I'm  done  with  you.  You'll  never  work  for  me 
again." 

"Oh  yes,  I  will,"  Zeb  insisted.  "You  cain't  turn  me  off! 
Nossa!" 

244 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

" I  can't,  eh?"  Bob  laughed  " I'll  show  you.  You  called 
yourself  a  valet?  Do  you  know  what  I  call  you?" 

" Nossa,  and  I  got  no  cu'iosity  at  tall!" 

"Then  pack  your  things  and  get  out  of  here.  You  can  keep 
the  clothes  money  I  gave  you  and  I'll  give  you  a  month's 
wages.  Where's  my  money?  Did  you  put  that  in  the 
trunk,  too?" 

"  Nossa !    I  couldn't  git  at  it." 

Zeb  essayed  a  friendly  chuckle,  as  a  dog  in  disgrace  wags 
his  tail  tentatively,  but  Bob  quenched  his  mirth  with  one 
look.  He  went  to  the  bathroom  and  clutched  at  his  five 
thousand-dollar  bills  and  the  rest  of  his  wealth. 

Having  no  other  clothes  at  hand,  he  put  on  his  bathrobe 
and  was  trying  to  compute  with  a  befuddled  brain  just  how 
much  to  pay  Zeb,  when  there  was  a  sharp  knock  at  the  hall 
door  to  the  living-room  and  Joe  Yarmy  rushed  in.  He  was 
not  followed  by  Kate. 

Bob  left  the  money  in  the  bathroom  and  went  out  to  meet 
him.  Zeb  drew  near  to  listen  and  intervene  again.  He  re 
gretted  that  he  had  packed  the  pistol.  He  had  rather  over 
done  the  good  work. 


CHAPTER  VI 

KATE  and  Joe  were  creatures  of  impulse,  and  impulses 
are  expensive,  especially  when  one  persists  in  acting 
on  them. 

The  amount  of  toil  and  thought  tney  nad  given  to  the 
effort  to  get  dishonest  money  would  have  totaled  them  vastly 
more  if  they  had  put  their  brains  into  the  harness  of  decent 
toil — not  counting  one  or  two  long  periods  of  incarceration 
when  they  earned  nothing  at  all. 

.  They  captured  a  good  deal  of  money  now  and  then  by 
various  forms  of  trickery  as  old  as  mankind  and  as  novel  as 
to-morrow's  police-court  news.  But  even  when  the  police 
did  not  get  it  back,  the  spending  of  it  was  precarious.  As 
Dirk  Memling  used -to  say,  "Any  fool  can  steal  things;  it 
takes  a  genius  to  cash  in  on  them."  Fences  were  all  thieves, 
and  the  pawnbrokers  could  never  be  trusted  either  to  lend 
a  fair  amount  or  to  keep  their  transactions  from  the  police. 

Joe  and  Kate  had  worked  various  dodges  for  money,  and 
Joe  had  used  the  khaki  uniform  in  most  of  the  many  ways 
in  which  the  uniform  is  always  abused  after  a  war. 

They  had  drifted  into  the  Hotel  Commodore  to  bask  in 
luxury  and  get  off  the  street  after  one  successful  coup  on 
the  day  when  Bob  came  early  to  meet  April.  They  had  hap 
pened  to  hear  Bob  bragging  to  the  Major  that  he  had  come 
into  a  legacy.  Ever  on  the  alert  for  opportunity,  they  had 
exchanged  glances  and  decided  to  make  a  try  at  him.  While 
Bob  was  quenching  his  thirst,  Joe  and  Kate  had  hastily 
agreed  to  work  off  on  him  the  story  of  the  old-home  property 
in  Texas.  They  had  used  variants  of  it  in  sundry  other 
swindles,  and  the  mania  for  Texas  oil  had  given  it  special 
timeliness. 

Kate  had  persuaded  Joe  to  let  her  pretend  to  be  his  sister, 
and  to  be  patient  while  she  played  upon  Bob's  noble  impulse 
to  help  out  a  fellow-soldier  and  his  native  impulse  to  dally 

246 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

with  a  pretty  girl.  She  had  grown  very  fond  of  her  victim, 
though  she  had  not  weakened  in  her  intention  to  take  ad 
vantage  of  him.  It  required  no  great  sagacity  on  her  part  to 
realize  that  the  more  virtuous  she  pretended  to  be  the  more 
Bob  would  admire  her. 

Bob  had  driven  them  so  frantic  by  his  delays  and  hesita 
tions,  that  Joe  would  cheerfully  have  sandbagged  him  if 
he  had  ever  caught  him  with  the  money  on  his  person. 

But  the  first  chance  Joe  ever  had  to  lay  hands  on  the  cash 
was  in  April's  studio,  and  he  dared  not  grab  it  and  run, 
since  Bob  was  big  and  strong  and  the  chances  for  a  get 
away  were  slim.  A  good  thief,  like  a  good  general,  never 
joins  battle  without  making  sure  of  his  road  to  retreat. 

Joe  had  recourse  then  to  the  pocket-piece  he  always  car 
ried — a  counterfeit  half-dollar,  made  with  both  sides  alike, 
for  use  on  occasions  when  the  toss  of  a  coin  is  accepted  as 
the  arbiter  of  a  dispute. 

Luck  had  fooled  Joe  again  and  the  half-dollar  had  rolled. 
By  the  time  he  had  recovered  it  the  five  thousand  had 
gone.  He  still  lacked  even  a  theory  as  to  the  method  of  its 
evanishment. 

Then  he  had  encountered  McCann  in  the  street  and  had 
been  ordered  out  of  town.  Joe  and  Kate  were  familiar  to 
many  of  the  detectives  of  many  of  our  cities,  and  each  city 
had  been  satisfied  to  pass  them  along  as  a  problem  to  the 
next.  This  form  of  serial  exile  was  very  annoying  to  Joe  and 
Kate,  but  the  penalties  of  disobeying  the  order  to  move  on 
were  sharp  and  severe,  never  more  so  than  at  that  moment, 
when  all  the  world  was  suffering  from  a  riot  of  crime. 

In  New  York,  as  in  other  cities,  robberies  were  carried  on 
more  in  the  spirit  of  the  old  highway  than  the  modern  town. 
Bank-messengers  were  held  up  every  day;  pepper  was  thrown 
in  their  eyes,  and  pistol  battles  broke  out  in  the  most  sedate 
neighborhoods.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  were 
carried  off  by  juvenile  carriers  hitherto  considered  trustwor 
thy  for  as  huge  a  bundle  of  securities  as  they  could  lift. 
Gangs  drove  up  to  banks,  cigar-stores,  laundries,  box-offices, 
dance-halls,  railway  and  subway  ticket-offices,  everywhere 
where  they  scented  money,  and  raided  them  with  presented 
revolvers,  then  leaped  into  motor-cars  and  dashed  through 
the  crowded  streets,  often  with  mobs  of  automobiles  in  pursuit. 
17  247 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  .TO? 

The  glorious  days  of  Jesse  James  and  his  fellow-heroes 
were  brought  back  multiplied  with  all  the  modern  improve 
ments.  The  police  and  detective  forces  were  treated  to  bar 
rages  of  such  scathing  press  notices  as  few  but  playwrights 
ordinarily  enjoy. 

In  consequence  it  was  almost  impossible  for  a  professional 
thief  to  go  about  the  most  innocent  unprofessional  errands 
without  impolite  comments  from  the  hated  authorities. 

This  was  a  cruel  anticlimax  to  the  dreams  Kate  and  Joe 
had  cherished  for  the  spending  of  Bob's  ten  thousand  dollars. 
It  wrung  their  poor  souls  to  give  up,  without  a  cent  to  show 
for  all  their  expensive  campaign.  It  offended  their  artistic 
conscience,  too. 

As  a  last  desperate  resort  they  had  fallen  back  on  a  hasty 
improvisation  of  the  badger  game,  which  is  doubtless  as 
ancient  as  Assyria,  and  will  doubtless  be  interrupted  when 
the  trumpet  of  Judgment  Day  is  sounded. 

The  Mann  Act,  indeed,  had  brought  the  game  a  brilliant 
revival.  That  virtuous  edict,  like  all  other  efforts  to  legis 
late  vice  out  of  existence,  had  given  the  criminals  something 
new  to  play  with.  It  was  meant,  of  course,  to  prevent 
wicked  old  men  from  taking  innocent  young  girls  on  vicious 
excursions.  Since  the  Federal  laws  can  always  operate 
where  a  state-line  occurs,  it  was  decreed  that  any  man  who 
should  go  from  one  state  to  another  with  a  woman  for  im 
moral  purposes  became  liable  to  arrest  and  punishment  by 
the  Federal  powers.  This  was  nuts  for  the  blackmailers, 
for  it  is  simply  necessary  for  a  wicked  young  woman  to  lure 
an  innocent  old  man  into  another  state,  then  a  confederate 
breaks  in  upon  them,  pretends  to  be  a  Federal  officer,  and 
arrests  them  both.  The  woman  pleads  frantically,  the  old 
man  is  scared  to  death,  and  the  pseudo-detective  finally  con 
sents  to  drop  the  case  when  he  has  shaken  down  the  old 
man  for  as  much  blackmail  as  the  traffic  will  bear.  Sometimes 
these  strolling  players  extort  fortunes  from  rich  men  who 
prefer  financial  to  social  bankruptcy. 

It  is  not  pretty,  but  it  is  art.  Kate  and  Joe  had  done 
it  once  or  twice,  but  had  been  unlucky  in  striking  victims  of 
meager  wealth.  They  could  not  invoke  the  Mann  Act  against 
Bob,  but  the  badger  trick  had  worked  to  perfection  up 
to  its  climax,  and  then  the  impulsive  Bob  had  unwittingly 

248 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

invented  a  new  checkmate  and  by  his  quixotic  chivalry  had 
thwarted  the  blackmailers. 

This  unforeseen  and  undeserved  return  of  good  for  evil 
had  quite  maddened  Kate.  She  had  "  tried  everything  once  " 
but  matrimony,  and  she  frightened  Joe  by  her  maniac  de 
termination  to  fool  with  that  experiment  also. 

It  has  always  been  one  of  the  hazards  of  the  criminal 
profession  that  decent  instincts  are  apt  to  intervene  unex 
pectedly  and  spoil  the  most  competent  schemes. 

Joe  wanted  to  give  Kate  the  beating  she  merited,  but  he 
had  learned  to  be  afraid  of  her  when  one  of  her  wild  whims 
possessed  her.  He  knew  that  she  would  kill  him  or,  worse 
yet,  peach  on  him,  if  he  resisted  her.  He  knew  something  of 
the  sensations  of  the  Kaiser,  seeing  one  after  another  of  his 
irresistible  offensives  crumpled  up  by  some  unforeseen  ob 
stacle  just  as  he  came  within  reach  of  Paris. 

The  Kaiser  was  chopping  trees  at  Amerongen  now,  and  Joe 
was  afraid  that  he  would  soon  be  cracking  rock  at  Ossining 
if  he  thwarted  Kate. 

He  had  little  money  left  when  he  bought  the  transportation 
at  the  Pennsylvania  Station.  In  fact,  he  had  only  funds 
enough  to  carry  the  three  to  Chicago,  with  a  drawing-room 
for  the  bridal  couple  and  a  lower  berth  for  "brother"  Joe. 

Texas,  in  any  case,  was  out  of  the  question.  Joe  and  Kate 
had  originally  come  from  there — at  the  advice  of  the  legal 
authorities.  They  had  been  in  the  oil-fields  once  or  twice, 
but  had  been  sped  thence  by  the  Texas  Rangers,  and  had 
brought  away  nothing  but  a  little  of  the  lingo.  They  had 
no  desire  to  go  back,  for  the  Rangers  are  rude  persons. 

What  Joe  and  Kate  would  do  when  they  got  to  Chicago 
they  left  to  fate  to  decide  in  Chicago.  Joe  hoped  that  Kate 
would  tire  of  matrimony,  as  she  had  tired  of  everything 
else,  and  be  ready  to  listen  to  reason,  tap  the  bridegroom  on 
the  head  with  a  lead  pipe,  and  make  off  with  the  five  thousand 
as  alimony.  A  little  crime  like  that  would  never  be  noticed 
in  Chicago. 

If  Joe  had  had  the  wisdom  to  carry  any  of  his  schemes 
out  to  their  logical  resolution,  he  would  have  gone  into  some 
business  with  a  more  certain  future  than  crockery. 

The  thoughts  of  youth  may  be  long,  long  thoughts,  but 
the  thoughts  of  criminals  are  short,  short.  The  lolly  of  Joe 

249 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

and  Kate  was  less  in  the  conduct  of  their  negotiations  than 
in  the  grand  initial  idiocy  of  undertaking  them  at  all. 

When  Joe  had  performed  his  chores  he  went  to  the  subway 
station  to  wait  for  Kate  and  Bob.  He  had  a  long  and  un 
easy  vigil,  and  then  Elate  came  along  alone.  She  was  in  great 
agitation  when  she  arrived. 

"Where's  your  little  sparring-partner?"  Joe  had  asked. 

"He's  coming  along  as  soon  as  he  gets  his  clothes  on. 
Seen  McCann?" 

"No.  I  think  I  lose  him.  But  I  don't  want  to  be  too 
sure.  What  kep'  you  so  long?" 

Kate  told  him  of  the  bunch  of  women  she  had  found  in 
Bob's  rooms,  and  of  the  battle  she  had  fought  for  his  posses 
sion,  and  of  her  proud  victory,  with  the  unexpected  extra- 
purse  of  the  necklace. 

Joe's  eyes  were  diamonds  as  he  murmured : 

"Real  shiners?     Lea'  me  lamp  'em  once." 

"Not  here!"  said  Elate,  "with  everybody  in  town  hangin' 
raound.  Take  my  word  for  it,  they  are  worth  a  million 
dollas,  mo'  or  less." 

"Well,  let's  beat  it  and  call  it  a  day's  work." 

"What,  and  lose  ma  bran '-new  husband?" 

"Ah,  hell,  what  you  want  of  a  husband?  What  you  goin' 
to  do  with  him  when  you  get  him?" 

Kite's  canny  features  grew  saintly  as  she  murmured, 
"Love  will  find  the  way." 

Many  a  more  honorable  woman  has  let  love  so  bemuse  her 
that  she  has  risked  all  rather  than  be  content  with  much. 

Let  him  that  is  of  unerring  aim,  as  the  parable  says  literally, 
cast  the  first  stone  at  Elate. 

Her  rapture  began  to  dwindle,  though,  as  the  minutes 
slipped  away  without  bringing  her  the  sight  of  the  new  lord 
of  her  life.  She  and  Joe  paced  the  murky  subway  plat 
form,  letting  train  after  train  go  by,  and  feeling  that  each 
one  carried  off  their  last  chance  of  escape.  The  ticket- 
chopper  stared  at  them,  but  assumed  that  they  were  using 
his  cavern  for  a  rendezvous,  as  so  many  did.  New  York 
couples  have  scant  play  for  romance.  A  policeman,  going 
home  from  work,  gave  them  a  scare  as  he  studied  them  idly. 

They  kept  referring  to  the  clock,  and  taking  new  alarms 
from  its  relentless  grinding  away  of  their  sparse  leisure. 

250 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

44  He's  chucked  you.  He  ain't  newa  comin',"  Joe  mocked, 
but  Kate's  face  was  so  piteous  that  he  forbore  to  torment 
her.  He  was  tempted  to  wrest  the  necklace  from  her  and 
dart  aboard  a  train  with  it,  but  again  his  artistic  conscience 
weakly  yielded  to  a  cheap  Philistine  tenderness. 

Kate  felt  like  the  woman  in  the  old  picture  of  the  Rock  of 
Ages,  clinging  to  the  cross  while  the  waves  crash  at  her  feet. 
She  felt  that  if  she  let  go  of  Bob's  strong  support  the  waves 
would  drag  her  down  forever  into  a  life  that  she  found  as 
unsatisfactory  as  good  people  find  virtue. 

But  her  grip  on  hope  could  not  last  forever.  She  could 
not  turn  the  station  clock  back  or  tamper  with  the  hours. 
She  grew  sick  with  terror  and  dismay.  She  did  not  so  much 
blame  Bob  for  treachery  as  dread  his  awakening  to  the  truth 
about  her.  At  last  Joe  said: 

"You've  either  got  to  go  get  him  or  give  him  up.  They's 
no  two  ways  about  it.  Let's  go  hunt  for  the — " 

"  If  we  go,  he  may  come  here  and  not  find  us.  Then  he'll 
think  we've  chucked  him.  He'll  think  I  stole  his  motha's 
necklace,  and  he'll  hate  me  forewa,"  Kate  wailed. 

"Maybe  he  got  the  wrong  station  in  mind,  and  is  waitin* 
down  the  line  somewhere." 

"But  if  we  leave  here,  he  may  turn  up." 

There  are  few  customs  that  have  caused  more  excruciating 
mental  torment  than  the  habit  of  arranging  to  meet  some 
body  somewhere.  Railway  stations  probably  house  more 
mental  agony  than  asylums. 

Kate  dared  neither  to  go  nor  to  stay;  to  wait  longer  was 
impossible;  not  to  wait  longer  was  intolerable. 

At  length  Joe  said:  "You  go  afta  him,  and  I'll  wait  here. 
Then  one  of  us  is  bound  to  nab  him." 

"  No;  he  might  come,  and  before  I  could  get  back  it  would 
be  too  late  to  get  to  the  City  Hall." 

4 'Then  lea1  me  go  afta  him,  and  you  wait  here.  If  he 
comes,  you  beat  it  for  the  license  and  I'll  go  wait  for  you  at 
the  church." 

This  seemed  to  be  an  inspiration.  Kate  agreed  to  it  and 
Joe  hurried  away,  his  heart  full  of  gentle  contempt  for  Kate 
and  of  hot  wrath  at  Bob  for  sweating  them  through  *a  third 
degree  of  suspense. 

Kate  was  sorely  tempted  to  take  a  peek  at  the  necklace, 

251 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

but  the  station  platform  was  never  without  its  crowd  of 
people  getting  off  trains  or  waiting  to  get  on  them.  The 
box  felt  light,  but  the  wrapping-paper  was  heavy  enough  to 
give  it  a  little  heft,  and  it  had  been  reinforced  inside  to  keep 
the  lawn  ties  straight. 

She  solaced  herself  by  toying  with  the  wedding-ring.  She 
had  been  surprised  at  the  cheapness  of  it.  The  most  expen 
sive  plain  gold  band  she  could  buy  cost  only  ten  dollars.  She 
felt  that  she  had  never  made  so  wonderful  an  investment. 

Getting  married  is  one  of  the  greatest  bargains  there  are. 
It  is  staying  married,  or  getting  unmarried,  that  costs. 


CHAPTER  VII 

WHEN  Joe  reached  Bob's  hotel  and  went  to  his  room, 
without  waiting  to  be  announced,  he  was  sure  that 
Bob  had  gone  or  that  he  would  find  him  just  going. 

When  he  saw  him  in  his  bathrobe,  with  bare  knees  visible 
as  he  came  forward,  his  pent-up  impatience  broke  out  in  a 
flood: 

"Well,  I'll  be  double  damned.  Ain't  you  even  dressed 
yet?  And  me  and  Kate  drillin'  up  and  down  that  Gawdam 
subway  till  me  feet  ache !  What  the — " 

"I'm  mighty  sorry — "  Bob  began. 

"Sony!  You're  sorry!  What  the—  Well,  I'll  be— if  this 
don't  beat—  Je— " 

"It  was  absolutely  impossible  for  me  to  get  away.  I 
couldn't  go  to  the  church  or  the  City  Hall  like  this,  could  I?" 

"Who  said  you  could?  You  got  clo'es,  'ain't  you?  You've 
took  time  enough  to  dress  a  whole  army.  Whyn't  you  put 
on  your  pants?" 

"Because  they're  not  here!" 

"They  'ain't  been  stole  off  you?" 

"Yes." 

"Well,  I've  heard  of  everything  else,  but  this  beats — 
'Ain't  you  got  a  nurse  or  somebody  to  take  care  of  you?" 

"That's  enough,  Mr.  Yarmy.  I'm  in  no  mood  to  take 
anything  from  you.  I ' ve  had  more  than  I  can  stand  already . ' ' 

"More  'n  you  can  stand?  How  about  Kate?  How  much 
is  she  supposed  to  stand,  huh?" 

"I  can't  tell  you  how  sorry  I  am." 

"You  needn't  try  to  tell  me  nothin'.  What  you  gonna 
do?  That's  the  question.  What  you  gonna  do?  Go  to  bed 
or  git  married  first?" 

"  I  can't  do  anything  till  I  get  my  clothes.  If  you'll  wait 
for  a  later  train,  I'll  send  out  and  buy  some." 

"Later  nothin'!  We  gotta  get  that  train.  That's  the 

253 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

abso-damn-lutely  last  train  we  can  get.  I  got  the  tickets, 
too — paid  for  'em  myself,  drawin'-room  an'  ewathing." 

"I'll  gladly  reimburse  you." 

"Reimburse  me!  It's  Kate  I'm  thinkin'  of.  She's  got  her 
fool  heart  set  on  marryin'  you,  damn  you.  I  wanted  her 
to  take  the  money  in  the  first  place,  but  she  wouldn't,  and 
now  I'm  sick  to  think  I  didn't.  You're  no  good,  anyway. 
You  and  she  got  about  as  much  chance  of  bein'  happy  mar 
ried  as  a — I  don't  know  what." 

This  theory  was  well  established  in  Bob's  heart.  He  was 
amazed  to  find  that  a  suspicion  of  it  had  occurred  to  Joe. 
They  were  two  men — two  business  men,  with  no  women 
present.  He  hated  to  be  ungallant  to  Kate,  but  he  thought 
of  April's  eyes  as  she  bade  him  an  eternal  farewell ;  he  thought 
of  her  mother's  reproachful  woe;  he  thought  of  his  own 
mother's  broken-hearted  stare.  It  was  a  case  of  three  hearts 
against  one.  Why  should  he  break  the  hearts  that  had  long 
been  his  lest  he  put  a  slight  crackle  in  the  surface  of  a  stran 
ger's  heart? 

Mad  hopes  and  projects  ran  pell-mell  through  his  mind, 
and  he  spoke : 

"Mr.  Yarmy,  this  is  a  very  delicate  matter.  I'm  a  beast 
anyway  you  fix  it,  but — the  money  you  speak  of — suppose 
I  gave  you  what  I  have — the  five  thousand  I  first  spoke  of — 
would  it — would  it  insult  your  sister  if  I  offered  her  that 
instead  of  my  hand  ?  Be  perfectly  frank  about  it,  won't  you  ? ' ' 

Joe's  face  lighted  up  as  if  some  one  had  turned  an  electric 
switch  inside  his  head.  His  eyes  were  incandescent  bulbs. 
Kate  was  too  far  away  to  protest.  At  this  distance,  her  in 
fatuation  looked  doubly  insane.  Common  sense  was  coming 
back  to  its  own.  He  spoke  cautiourly,  hardly  daring  to  be 
lieve  that  the  Jinx  that  had  ruined  all  his  schemes  had  fallen 
asleep  for  a  moment. 

"I  don't  quite  get  you.  Are  you  offerin'  me  five  thousand 
dolla's  to  release  you  from  yo'  promise  of  ma'iage  to — to  ma 
sista?" 

Bob  mistook  his  earnestness  for  repugnance.  He  hastened 
to  say: 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  mean  to  be  offensive.  I'm  willing  to  carry 
out  my  promise,  but  I  was  just  thinking — " 

"So  am  I.  I  ask  you  again,  is  this  yo'  proposition:  You 

254 


THE   INFATUATE   ZEB   LUNGED   FOR   IT 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

slip — you  pay  me  five  thousand  dolla's  and  all  bets — the 
wedding  is  off  ?" 

"That  was  what  I  was  thinking  of,  but,  of  course,  if  you — " 

"Well,  I'll  accept.  My  sista  isn't  here,  but  you  pass  me 
the  cash  and  I'll  undatake  to  square  it  with  her." 

Bob  fairly  groaned  with  relief.  He  felt  like  old  Atlas 
when,  for  a  moment,  Hercules  lifted  the  world  off  his  shoul 
ders  and  let  him  straighten  up  again — for  a  moment. 

Bob  whirled  and  strode  into  the  other  room  to  get  the 
money  and  buy  his  freedom.  That  was  cheap  at  any  price. 

Zeb  had  heard  the  parley.  He  had  rejoiced  at  the  hint 
of  his  master's  release  from  the  shameful  bondage  to  the 
Yarmys.  He  had  been  the  agent  of  high  Heaven  in  the 
transaction.  All  his  audacities  were  divinely  justified.  He 
was  ready  for  more,  and  a  trifle  overbearing  and  dictatorial, 
as  prophets  usually  are. 

He  intercepted  Bob  and  demanded,  with  devout  impu 
dence  : 

"Hoi'  on,  Masta  Bob.  You  ain't  gwine  to  pass  ova  none 
of  that  money  to  that  Yahmy  trash?" 

"I  certainly  am,  and  I  advise  you  not  to  interfere  again." 

He  brushed  Zeb  aside,  went  into  the  bathroom,  picked  up 
the  five  magnificent  slips  of  paper,  and  turned  back.  Zeb 
wished  he  had  known  they  were  there.  He  blocked  Bob's 
way  again  with  appealing  gestures,  whimpering: 

"Don't  you  do  it,  Masta  Bob.  You  listen  to  me!  I  jes' 
cain't  allow  you!" 

Bob  walked  past  him  without  deigning  to  answer.  Zeb 
caught  at  his  bathrobe.  Bob  snatched  it  free.  Zeb  followed 
on  his  heels,  even  into  the  room  where  Joe  Yarmy  waited, 
trying  to  subdue  the  bubbles  of  joy  that  were  streaming 
from  the  champagne-cup  of  his  heart. 

And  then,  as  Bob  held  out  the  roll  of  money  in  his  palms, 
the  infatuate  Zeb  lunged  for  it,  clutched  it,  leaped  backward, 
swung  the  door  to,  turned  the  key  in  the  lock,  rammed  the 
money  in  his  pocket,  hobbled  to  the  container  of  his  vacuum- 
cleaner,  caught  it  up  like  a  fat  baby,  hobbled  to  the  rear  door, 
took  the  key  from  the  lock,  darted  into  the  hall,  locked  the 
door,  and  slipped,  sprawled,  and  hopped  down  the  steep 
stairway,  round  and  round  and  round  till  he  came  out  in  an 
area. 

255 


CHAPTER  VIII 

'VEB  was  amazed  to  find  himself  alive  on  level  ground 
/ \t  again,  with  no  bones  broken.  He  was  in  an  ecstasy  of 
fear  and  of  inspiration.  He  moderated  his  pace  to  a  walk 
and  made  his  way  to  the  street.  Not  a  taxicab  was  in  sight 
— only  an  obsolete  old  hack  with  a  living  skeleton  dozing  in 
the  shafts,  and  a  driver  on  the  box  dreaming  of  the  ancient 
days  when  people  rode  in  horse-drawn  vehicles. 

Zeb  opened  the  door  of  the  cab,  slammed  his  vacuum- 
cleaner  inside,  and  said  to  the  old  man,  who  turned  to  cast  a 
startled  glance  at  the  disturber  of  his  repose: 

"Hey,  man!  You  gotta  git  me  to  Bronnix  Pahk  the 
quickest  you  kin.  I  got  a  rush  job  up  yonda,  and  I  got 
money  what  says  Scoot!" 

The  horse  had  turned  round  to  stare  in  amazement,  and 
he  plunged  forward  as  Zeb  clambered  and  sprawled  inside 
and  closed  the  door  after  him  just  before  a  lamp-post  brushed 
it  off. 

Bob  and  Joe  had  been  statufied  with  amazement  at  Zeb's 
unparalleled  assault.  Of  all  the  daylight  robberies  Joe  had 
heard  of  or  shared  in,  this  was  the  coarsest  work.  He  simply 
had  to  pause  and  exclaim,  "Well,  I'll  be — "  etc.,  before  he 
could  move. 

As  he  leaped  for  the  door,  he  ran  into  Bob,  still  staring  at  his 
empty  palm.  Bob  whirled,  and  the  two  men,  rivals  in  wrath, 
canceled  each  other's  struggles  at  the  door.  They  were  so 
blind  with  rage  that  neither  would  yield  the  other  precedence 
in  setting  his  shoulder  to  it. 

It  was  a  stout,  sound-proof  door,  and  it  gave  way  slowly 
and  rendingly. 

When  they  pushed  through  its  splinters  they  ran  to  the 
front-hall  door  first  and  down  the  hall.  When  they  got  back 
the  wind  had  blown  the  door  shut.  It  had  a  spring-lock. 

256 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

Bob's  keys  were  in  the  bathroom.  The  two  men  raged  till 
a  chambermaid  came  along  with  a  pass-key.  Bob's  costume 
explained  for  him.  She  let  them  in.  They  went  to  the  back- 
hall  door. 

This  also  was  locked,  and  not  with  a  spring-lock,  as  the 
front  doors  were,  but  with  an  old-fashioned  contrivance. 
The  key  was  on  the  other  side.  This  door  was  still  harder 
to  smash,  and  when  they  had  shattered  it  and  looked  down 
the  well  of  the  stairway  there  was  no  sign  of  the  fugitive. 

They  rang  for  the  freight-elevator  and  cursed  its  delay. 
They  were  palsied  with  chagrin  at  the  old  negro's  easy  suc 
cess.  When  the  elevator  finally  arrived  and  the  door  slid 
back  the  elevator-man  disclaimed  all  knowledge  of  Zeb. 
He  had  not  ridden  in  that  car. 

" Come  on!"  said  Joe.  "We'll  get  him  before  he's  gone 
fah.  We'll  set  the  cops  after  the  old — " 

Bob  looked  down  at  his  Scottish  knees.  So  did  the  ele 
vator-man.  Bob  had  on  even  more  than  the  costume  that 
young  men  wore  about  the  New  York  streets  when  they 
practised  for  the  annual  Marathons,  but  he  shook  his  head. 

"Count  me  out,"  he  muttered. 

He  stood  amid  the  flinders  of  his  back  door  in  abject  help 
lessness,  as  when,  on  the  last  day  of  the  war,  the  Germans 
had  "shot  the  pants  off  him"  and  left  him  helpless  in  his 
wrecked  airship  in  the  hamlet  of  Villeperdue. 

But  Joe  Yarmy  leaped  cursing  into  the  elevator  and  ordered 
it  to  deliver  him  to  the  nether  regions.  The  door  slid  shut 
and  the  car  dropped  fast,  but  Joe's  language  came  smoking 
back  as  he  filled  it  with  a  profanity  that  dazed  the  charioteer. 


CHAPTER  IX 

T^  VERYBODY  is  always  making  fun  or  shame  of  the  hy- 
f"y  pocrisies  and  lapses  of  the  virtuous.  But  the  wicked 
are  just  as  inconsistent  and  fall  just  as  ludicrously  short  of 
perfection. 

Here  was  Joe  Yarmy,  a  thief  by  trade  and  an  avowed 
enemy  of  the  police,  for  whom  he  furnished  as  much  employ 
ment  as  he  could — here  was  Joe  Yarmy,  standing  on  the 
sidewalk  and  cursing  the  fact  that  there  was  not  a  policeman 
in  sight  to  stop  the  thief  who  had  stolen  the  goods  he  had 
meant  to  steal  himself. 

It  was  the  second  time  in  one  day  that  a  sum  of  five  thou 
sand  dollars  had  escaped  Joe's  needful  clutch,  and  to  be  "bit 
twice  in  the  same  place"  was  considered  the  depth  of  ig 
nominy  by  Joe  and  his  sort. 

On  the  first  occasion  he  had  not  been  able  even  to  imagine 
a  clue  to  the  thief.  On  the  second  he  saw  the  black  hand 
of  old  Zeb  snatch  the  money  and  slam  the  door. 

Joe  had  searched  that  very  darky  that  very  morning  for 
the  other  five  thousand,  and  had  neither  found  it  nor  expected 
to.  Now  he  decided  that  the  incredible  coon  had  captured 
the  swag  on  both  occasions. 

He  had  a  native,  a  geographical,  willingness  to  abuse  a 
negro  on  general  principles.  He  had  lent  a  hand  at  a  lynch 
ing  or  two  without  troubling  to  make  sure  that  the  victim 
was  guilty  or  tha^E  his  offense  was  heinous.  He  wanted  to 
do  all  those  things  that  are  done  to  negroes — tortures  that 
have  hardly  been  equaled — except,  of  course,  in  the  agonies 
visited  by  Indian  savages  upon  pioneers,  and  by  earnest 
Christians  upon  other  Christians  who  differed  slightly  in 
doctrine. 

It  would  have  fared  ill  with  Zeb  if  Joe  had  found  him. 
It  would  have  fared  ill  with  Joe  if  he  had  found  the  policeman 
he  was  looking  for.  The  only  thing  that  saved  Joe  was  his 

258 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

uncertainty.  If  his  frantic  soul  could  have  had  its  way,  he 
would  have  done  as  Stephen  Leacock's  hero  did,  and  "gal 
loped  off  madly  in  all  directions." 

He  stood  swaying  in  the  middle  of  the  block.  At  either 
end  of  it  was  a  four-corners  leading  north,  south,  east,  and 
west,  not  to  mention  the  old  bias  of  Broadway  playing  havoc 
with  the  compass. 

The  fugitive  might  have  chosen  any  of  those  routes,  and 
pursuit  along  the  wrong  one  would  only  increase  the  interval. 

As  Joe  rocked  and  puffed  out  curses,  various  other  con 
siderations  began  to  bubble  up  in  his  mind. 

He  had  been  warned  to  get  out  of  New  York  on  the  evening 
train.  He  remembered  with  a  sardonic  grin  a  banner  he  had 
seen  strung  across  the  street  of  an  Oklahoma  town  un 
friendly  to  Africans: 

"Nigger,  don't  let  the  sun  go  down." 

And  now  New  York  had  swung  the  same  banner  on  him. 
The  police  had  murmured : 

"Yarmy,  don't  let  the  sun  go  down." 

If  he  went  to  the  police  to  set  them  on  Zeb's  track,  they 
would  lock  him  up.  Or  if  he  found  a  lieutenant  on  the  desk 
so  ignorant  as  to  be  unfamiliar  with  his  face  and  fame,  the 
yap  would  ask  about  the  money,  and  how  it  came  to  be  stolen, 
and  whose  it  was.  To  tell  a  string  of  lies  to  a  cop  was  risky, 
and  to  explain  that  Bob  Taxter  was  paying  it  to  Joe  to  stall 
off  Kate's  wedding  would  put  the  lieutenant  wise.  Next  to 
a  reporter,  the  desk-man  of  a  police  station  has  the  most 
cynical  eye  in  the  world  and  is  the  hardest  audience  to  con 
vince  of  innocence. 

Joe  realized  that  the  protection  and  industry  of  the  police 
were  not  for  him  to  invoke.  And  they  called  this  a  free 
country ! 

He  jerked  a  cigar  from  his  pocket  and  sank  a  canine  tooth 
into  it  with  a  viciousness  that  did  him  a  little  good.  He 
could  not  find  a  match  in  his  pockets,  so  he  took  a  "dry 
smoke"  and  considered.  Like  the  piper's  cow,  he  "consid 
ered  very  well." 

There  was  no  use  in  going  back  to  Bob  Taxter.  That 
boob  was  cleaned  dry. 

All  this  while  Kate  was  waiting  for  him.  Joe  set  out 
automatically  to  find  her  and  divide  the  abominable  news 

259 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

with  her.  He  had  nothing  else  to  split.  Joe  was  always 
strong  for  fifty-fifty  on  his  bad  luck. 

His  gait  slackened.  Kate  had  chucked  him  once;  had  been 
mushy  enough  to  want  to  many  this  Taxter  and  let  her  old 
side-partner  slide. 

She  was  through  with  him.  Well,  then,  he  was  through 
with  her. 

The  problem  of  funds  came  up.  He  remembered  his  ex 
penditure  for  the  transportation  to  Chicago — three  tickets, 
a  drawing-room  and  a  lower  berth  for  the  honeymoon  that 
turned  to  cheese. 

He  boarded  a  street-car  and  went  to  the  Pennsylvania 
Station.  At  the  redemption  window  he  hesitated,  then 
decided  to  keep  his  own  ticket  and  take  the  train  alone. 

The  ticket-office  accepted  his  two  tickets  and  paid  him 
back  a  total  of  $71.80.  But  he  was  told  that  the  drawing- 
room  would  have  to  be  redeemed  in  Chicago.  In  the  line  of 
waiting  men,  however,  he  found  one  only  too  eager  to  buy  it 
from  him  at  the  tariff  of  $18  plus  the  tax  of  $1.44. 

As  Joe  gathered  in  all  the  money,  he  thought  of  Kate  again. 
She  would  have  to  shift  for  herself.  Well,  she  had  quit  first, 
and  he  was  tired  of  her,  anyway.  A  good-looking  woman 
could  always  cash  in  on  her  looks  in  the  open  market  or  on 
the  curb.  This  vras  an  enormous  advantage  over  a  man, 
who  could  find  no  place  to  pawn  his  securities. 

Suddenly  Joe  recalled  Kate's  talk  of  the  necklace.  If 
he  had  seen  it  he  would  have  thought  of  it  before.  But  it 
was  only  a  rumor.  Now  it  made  a  ghostly  radiance  in  his 
dark  skull.  It  lit  up  Kate  handsomely.  The  wench  was 
worth  cultivating,  after  all.  He  hadn't  ought  to  ditch  her 
too  sudden.  Them  skirts  can't  be  treated  like  men  can. 

It  is  almost  impossible  for  the  normal  mind  not  to  feel 
amiable  toward  people  who  have  money.  Money  is  the  great 
pacifier.  Even  the  church  accepts  it  as  a  penance  for  the  sins 
of  the  living  and  the  dead. 

Joe  hurried  to  the  subway  and  took  a  train  to  the  station 
where  he  had  left  Kate. 

She  was  not  there. 


CHAPTER  X 

INNOCENCE  hath  her  repentance  no  less  confounded 
1  than  sin. 

Bob  Taxter's  good,  clean  heart  was  as  full  of  black  wrath 
as  Joe  Yarmy's  crooked  soul.  And  he  would  have  dealt 
with  Zeb  as  harshly  if  he  could  have  overtaken  him. 

But  he  could  not  even  pursue.  He  was  trouserless.  He 
could  not  run  through  the  streets,  because  he  had  nothing 
on  his  legs  except  a  pair  of  those  dimity  trunks  that  now 
replace  the  voluminous  Trojan  drawers  of  our  forefathers. 

Bob's  first  thought  was  of  the  police.  When  Joe  Yarmy 
shot  down  the  freight-elevator  Bob  went  back  to  his  own 
apartment  to  telephone  the  alarm. 

By  the  time  he  had  picked  his  way  through  the  ragged 
edges  of  two  doors  (which  he  would  be  compelled  to  pay  for 
— and,  worse  yet,  explain)  he  realized  that  he  would  have  to 
tell  the  police  all  about  it — all  about  his  marital  complica 
tion,  all  about  his  effort  to  buy  off  the  bride,  all  about  the 
old  negro,  and  all  about  his  first  five  thousand — and  his  first 
fiancee. 

This  would  be  an  unpleasant  burden  to  unload  over  the 
telephone,  and  a  less  pleasant  to  pour  out  before  the  detec 
tive  who  would  doubtless  be  sent  up  for  further  particulars. 

Bob  hung  the  receiver  back  on  the  hook  almost  before  he 
took  it  off. 

He  also,  like  Joe,  took  comfort  in  gnawing  a  guiltless 
cigar  to  shreds  and  declaring  war  on  the  African  race. 

He  sank  into  a  chair,  stretched  out  his  bare  legs,  and 
cursed  dismally. 

He  wondered  why  Joe  did  not  come  back.  He  was  doubt 
less  following  Zeb. 

Bob  wondered  when  Kate  would  turn  up.  He  would  have 
to  talk  to  her  through  the  door.  He  could  not  let  her  in. 
His  costume  would  be  an  anachronism  before  the  ceremony. 

261 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

To  shout  his  story  through  a  door-panel  to  a  baffled  bride 
would  be  no  more  congenial  than  stammering  it  over  the  wire 
into  the  ears  of  an  alkaline  policeman. 

He  wished  that  he  could  find  some  way  to  get  out  of  the 
house  before  Kate  came  back.  If  only  he  had  a  pair  of 
trousers!  He  remembered  hazily  a  once-famous  advertising 
lyric: 

When  the  pant-hunter  pantless  is  panting  for  pants, 
He  pants  for  the  best  pants  the  pant-market  grants, 
And  panteth  unpanted  until  he  implants 
Himself  in  a  pair  of  our  Plymouth  Rock  Pants. 

At  that  time  the  word  "pants"  was  considered  an  atro 
cious  vulgarity  of  peculiar  plebeiance.  No  gentleman  wore 
them  or  referred  to  them.  Recently  the  word  had  come  into 
playful  popularity.  Fashionable  ladies  not  only  spoke  gaily 
of  them,  but  wore  them.  Words  and  things  and  habits,  like 
families,  rise  up  from  lowly  origins,  flourish  awhile,  and 
sink  back  into  poverty  or  to  a  lavender  oblivion.  Poets 
would  one  day  be  using  "pants"  for  its  exquisite  archaic 
charm. 

Bob's  wardrobe  consisted  of  the  brown  shoes  and  brown 
socks  he  had  on;  the  underwear,  ditto;  a  fuzzy  silk  hat,  a 
straw  hat,  a  bathrobe,  and  a  few  other  trifles. 

The  rest  of  the  things  were  in  a  trunk,  by  now  at  the 
Pennsylvania  Station  (he  assumed).  He  might  telephone 
and  have  it  sent  back  to  the  hotel.  He  looked  for  the  claim- 
check.  It  was  gone!  Zeb,  the  vacuum-cleaner,  had  made 
a  clean  sweep. 

As  Bob  ran  about  the  room  he  stumbled  over  the  vacuum- 
cleaner  hose,  which  Zeb  had  been  unable  to  carry  off.  It 
symbolized  the  serpent  Bob  had -warmed  in  his  bosom.  He 
felt  almost  small  enough  to  crawl  into  the  nozle.  He  jounced 
back  in  his  chair.  He  was  imprisoned  by  his  undress  and 
ashamed  to  call  for  help. 

He  thought  of  his  mother.  Again  an  old  song  taunted  him : 
"There  was  I,  waiting  at  the  church."  Everything  got  into 
a  mocking  song  nowadays. 

He  was  sorry  for  his  mother,  yet  she  would  be  glad  that 
his  wedding  had  not  come  off — or  had  come  off.  Or  had  it  ? 
At  any  moment  Kate  might  arrive  with  the  news  that  she 

262 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

was  going  through  with  the  wedding  and  would  wait  for 
a  later  train,  or  to-morrow. 

He  thought  of  April,  and  his  pride  sweat  blood.  What 
a  cad  he  had  had  to  be  in  her  eyes!— a  bad  actor  making  a 
bad  role  worse.  He  could  never  dare  go  near  her  again. 
Never  had  she  been  so  beautiful.  She  had  fought  for  him 
and  stuck  by  him  as  long  as  she  could.  A  regular  gimper — 
that  was  what  she  was! 

The  telephone  rang.  Bob's  heart  shivered  with  it.  That 
was  his  bride,  no  doubt,  come  to  claim  him.  She  still  had  a 
mortgage  on  his  life,  since  Zeb  had  run  off  with  the  ransom 
money. 

He  let  the  telephone  buzz  as  long  as  he  dared.  Then  he 
rose  and  answered  it.  He  heard  his  mother's  voice. 

"Is  Mista  Taxta  theah?  Bob  honey,  is  that  you?  Oh, 
Heaven  be  blest  1  I  was  afraid  something  te'ble  had  happened 
to  you.  Are  you  all  right,  honey?  But  tell  me.  I've  been 
heah  at  the  Little  Chu'ch,  waiting  and  waiting,  but  you 
didn't  come.  Did  I  get  the  wrong  chu'ch,  or  what?" 

"  No,  mother,  I — I — er — there's  been  a  hitch,  and — and — 
well,  my  plans  are  uncertain  just  now." 

He  could  hear  the  thrill  of  hope  in  her  voice:  "You  don't 
mean  it's  all  off?  Oh,  that's  too  good  to  be  true." 

"I'm  afraid  so.    I — I  can't  tell  you  just  now,  but — " 

"Are  you  leaving  town  on  that  train?" 

"No;  not  on  that  train,  but — well — I — you — you  go  on 
back  to  Aunt  Sally's,  and  I'll  telephone  you  there  as  soon 
as  I  decide." 

" But  can't  I  see  you?    I'll  come  right  ova." 

"No — no,  indeed — you  can't.  You  go  on  up  to  Aunt 
Sally's,  and  I'll  let  you  know.  Good-by,  honey  love!" 

She  had  to  accept  that.  It  was  only  half -hope;  but  it  was 
better  than  whole  despair,  though  not  nearly  so  restful. 

Some  one  knocked  at  the  door.  He  was  afraid  to  answer. 
He  sat  motionless  till  the  knocking  ceased  and  somebody's 
footsteps  padded  away  into  silence.  By  and  by  there  was 
another  sharp  knock.  He  sat  still.  A  key  was  put  in  the 
door.  Bob  had  a  horrified  expectation  of  seeing  a  hotel 
chambermaid— one  of  those  daring  explorers  that  Bill  Nye 
wrote  of,  vrho  come  into  a  hotei  room  and  change  the  sheets 
while  the  guest  gasps. 
18  263 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

In  came  a  valet,  who  had  got  the  pass-key  from  a  chamber 
maid.  He  came  in  to  hang  up  Bob's  dinner-jacket  and 
trousers,  which  he  had  pressed. 

He  was  startled  to  see  Bob  sitting  glum  in  decided  ne*glige". 
Bob  felt  called  upon  to  answer  the  questions  implied  in  this 
man's  glance:  "Somebody  stole  my  clothes." 

"Indeed!"  said  the  valet.  "They're  stealing  everything 
nowadays,  aren't  they?  Did  you  have  them  on  when  they 
stole  them,  sir?" 

"No,"  said  Bob. 

"They'd  have  taken  them  just  the  same,  sir,"  said  the 
valet.  "Sometimes  I  wonder  whatever  the  world's  getting 
at,  with  all  this  crime." 

Then,  noting  Bob's  remaining  money  on  the  bureau,  he 
made  the  suggestive  remark: 

"It's  lucky  they  didn't  get  your  money,  sir." 

Bob  took  the  "hint  and  gave  him  a  silver  quarter.  Then 
he  asked  if  the  valet  had  any  black  shoes  to  sell.  The  valet 
shook  a  regretful  head.  But  he  had  shirt-buttons,  collars, 
ties,  and  black-silk  socks. 

Bob  ordered  what  he  needed  and  the  valet  went  to  fetch 
the  things. 

While  Bob  waited  a  bell-boy  came  up  with  the  bill  that 
Bob  had  asked  for.  The  boy  accepted  a  quarter  and  left 
the  bill. 

Bob  regarded  it  with  dismay.  If  he  paid  it  he  would  not 
have  money  enough  to  get  to  Texas.  But  his  trunk  had 
gone,  and  he  would  be  expected  to  pay.  If  only  the  pro 
prietor  had  refused  to  let  the  trunk  go  until  the  shot  was 
settled ! 

The  valet  came  down  with  his  wares.  They  reduced  Bob's 
assets  by  ten  dollars.  He  finished  his  toilet,  and  made  a 
very  presentable  guest  for  an  informal  dinner,  if  one  did  not 
look  down  at  the  yellow  shoes.  But  he  could  not  go  to  Texas 
in  evening  clothes.  He  could  not  go  without  paying  his 
bill,  and  then  he  could  not  go  at  all. 

In  his  lost  trunk  there  was  a  complete  equipment  of  cos 
tumes,  but  no  money.  His  program  was  compulsory;  he 
must  get  back  his  trunk,  find  Zeb,  and  get  back  his  money, 
or  borrow  a  lot  from  somebody  before  he  could  go  to  Texas, 
or  even  stay  put  in  New  York. 

264 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

A  pretty  situation  for  one  who  but  yesterday  was  a  ten- 
thousandaire  with  a  million  in  prospect.  This  Napoleon  of 
finance  could  not  even  get  out  of  Corsica. 

He  decided  to  keep  what  funds  he  had  as  long  as  possible. 
He  was  blushing  like  mad  when  he  appeared  in  the  lobby  of 
the  hotel  in  his  premature  evening  clothes  and  explained  to 
the  clerk  that  he  would  not  give  up  his  room  just  yet,  but 
would  go  and  reclaim  his  trunk  and  get  his  day  clothes  out. 
He  would,  therefore,  let  his  bill  run  on  to  the  end  of  the  week. 

The  sophisticated  clerk  realized  from  Bob's  blushing  con 
fusion  that  he  was  not  trying  to  beat  the  hotel  and  was  polite, 
if  not  altogether  respectful. 

Bob  writhed  at  having  to  accept  the  man's  condescending 
generosity  and  rushed  out — not  "out  into  the  night,"  where 
desperate  heroes  and  heroines  go;  but  out  in  the  more  terrible 
day.  He  wanted  to  be  absent  when  Kate  came  back,  and  he 
wanted  to  buy  some  black  shoes  before  the  shops  closed. 

He  slunk  along  the  street  with  guilty  speed.  Policemen 
in  plenty  passed  him  now  and  recognized  his  sneaking  car 
riage,  but  imputed  it  properly  to  the  shame  of  his  rathe 
evening  clothes.  They  grinned.  Everybody  grinned,  and 
turned  to  grin  some  more. 

Bob  gave  a  perfect  proof  that  the  sense  of  shame  has  less 
to  do  with  nakedness  than  with  a  sense  of  inappropriateness. 
Bob  was  fully  clothed,  but  there  was  a  kind  of  indecency  about 
the  glare  of  the  late  sunlight  on  his  excessive  expanse  of  white 
shirt.  The  brown  shoes  with  the  dinner-jacket  were  posi 
tively  immoral. 

He  found  a  boot-shop  and  bought  a  pair  of  high,  black 
patent-leather  shoes  to  hide  the  brown  socks  coquetting 
below  his  black-broadcloth  trouser-hems.  He  would  have 
felt  rather  fashionable  if  it  had  been  an  hour  later.  Then 
people  would  have  glanced  at  him  with  respect  as  a  swell, 
instead  of  an  object  of  ridicule.  Decency  is  a  matter  not  only 
of  custom  but  of  chronometer  as  well. 

Bob  went  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station  and  asked  at  the 
baggage-office  for  his  trunk.  He  had  no  claim-check,  but 
an  explanation — fiction  founded  on  fact — secured  him  the 
privilege  of  search  on  his  promise  to  furnish  identification. 

He  explored  the  ultimate  recesses  of  the  baggage  world, 
where  mountains  of  trunks  made  cubist  landscapes,  and 

265 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

whine  little  one-man  automobiles  shot  here  and  there,  carry 
ing  luggage. 

No  trace  of  his  trunk  being  found,  a  search  of  the  records 
was  made,  and  the  baffling  fact  disclosed  that  no  baggage 
had  been  delivered  from  Bob's  hotel  that  day.  He  telephoned 
to  the  porter  there  and  learned  that  his  trunk  had  been 
rushed  to  the  Grand  Central — at  Zeb's  specific  directions. 

Bob  added  one  more  item  to  his  bill  of  damages  against 
Zeb.  He  was  too  weary  to  attempt  to  go  to  another  station 
and  search  another  throng  of  trunks. 

He  had  nothing  before  him  but  an  empty  evening,  followed 
by  an  eternity  of  remorse.  Since  he  had  so  much  remorse 
on  hand  already,  he  decided  that  a  little  more  would  not  be 
noticeable. 

He  felt  an  enormous  desire  to  be  gone  for  a  jpace  from 
the  cares  that  attend  the  well-behaved  young  man.  He  felt 
a  craving  for  a  period  of  thoughtlessness  and  recklessness. 
He  yearned  for  a  journey  to  some  Happy  Hunting  Ground 
where  one  could  play  ninepins  with  the  stupid  rules  of  life. 

In  short,  he  wanted  to  get  drunk.  He  wanted  to  get 
drunk  publicly  and  wildly  and  dramatically  before  a  lot  of 
people,  so  that  the  whole  world  might  see  him  slap  the  whole 
world  in  the  face  as  a  protest  against  its  intolerable  stupidity 
and  malignity 

This  is  as  mysterious  an  ambition  as  it  is  familiar — and 
terrific.  Every  people  of  every  age  and  clime  has  had  it 
and  found  some  alcoholic  brew  to  satisfy  it.  The  insects  and 
the  animals  are  not  innocent  of  the  intoxicating  effects  of 
intoxication. 

Among  mankind,  it  is  a  favorite  theme  of  the  poets  and 
the  police. 

Bob  was  not  likely  to  inspire  the  former,  but  the  latter 
might  expect  a  busy  night. 

It  is  painful  to  describe  the  folies  and  the  vices  01  our 
fellow-citizens.  The  theme  is  supposed  to  be  a  very  noble 
one  when  it  is  handled  in  the  pulp  t,  but  when  preachers  find 
it  handled  in  novels  they  are  sure  to  protest.  Perhaps  the 
element  of  professional  jealousy  is  not  absolutely  absent, 
but  it  is  curious  that  what  is  decent  in  church  should  be  in 
decent  outside,  isn't  it? — or  is  it? 

Nice  novelists  write  of  nice  people  doing  nice  things 

266 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

nicely  in  spite  of  all  the  machinations  of  a  few  machine-ma.de 
fiends  in  more  or  less  human  guise.  Naughty  novelists,  like 
wicked  reporters,  describe  what  they  find,  and  feel  it  dis 
honest  to  twist  the  facts  for  any  purpose  soever. 

There  are  many  good  souls  who  suffer  from  reading  any 
where  in  print  what  they  see  and  hear  all  about  them.  They 
feel  that  if  nobody  wrote  about  bad  people  or  the  bad  deeds 
of  goodish  people,  young  people  would  not  be  tempted  to  do 
wrong.  As  if  in  countries  where  there  is  no  fiction  even 
in  the  newspaper  form  there  were  no  vice !  As  if  the  animals, 
who  surely  do  not  read  or  go  to  plays  or  moving-picture 
shows,  did  not  misbehave  at  all!  And  surely  no  historian 
pretends  that  the  alphabet  was  invented  before  adultery, 
arson,  assassination,  and  the  other  crimes. 

It  is  all  very  baffling. 

A  third  multitude  of  readers  is  patient  with  the  wickedness 
of  the  wicked,  but  is  revolted  when  the  hero  or  heroine  of 
a  novel  does  anything  unwise  or  wicked.  They  have  no 
patience  with  a  book-person  who  makes  foolish  investments 
— though  the  annual  waste  of  the  United  States  alone  in  this 
field  totals  billions  of  dollars;  though  the  readers  themselves 
may  waste  space  in  their  safe-deposit  boxes  with  shares 
whose  market  value  is  nothing,  net,  paying  various  rates  of 
interest  on  the  same  amount.  They  will  call  Bob  a  jackass 
for  wanting  to  put  money  into  oil  speculation,  though  it  has 
been  estimated  that  in  spite  of  the  enormous  amount  of 
wealth  made  in  the  fields  during  the  boom,  more  money  was 
put  in  than  was  taken  out. 

Other  readers  will  never  forgive  Bob  for  wanting  to  get 
drunk,  and  getting  it.  Neither  will  Bob.  The  worst  and  the 
best  of  it  was  that  he  found  it  almost  impossible  to  be  bad 
entertainingly. 

Of  course,  the  sordid  and  odious  old  wallows  of  swinish 
carnality  were  available  to  the  young  man  about  New  York, 
as  to  any  man  in  any  community,  American  or  foreign, 
large  or  small,  ancient  or  modern.  Persons  on  the  alert  for 
brief  partnerships  of  this  sort  were  active  just  outside  Eden, 
and  in  Abraham's  time,  among  Moses's  followers,  among  the 
Crusaders  in  Palestine,  in  Puritan  New  England,  and  ap 
parently  in  every  place  where  a  crowd  of  people  of  any  sort 
is  assembled. 

267 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

But  Bob  was  in  no  mood  for  such  dismal  lubricity.  He 
wanted  hilarity,  brilliance,  excitement,  light,  laughter,  and 
revelry. 

And  these  things,  curiously  enough,  New  York  seemed 
unable  to  afford  him  after  midnight.  The  reckless  gaieties 
of  the  new  Babel  were  simply  not  to  be  found  as  advertised. 
He  found  other  sensations,  which — but  poor  Kate  must  not 
be  left  all  night  on  that  subway  platform. 


CHAPTER  XI 

KATE  YARMY  was  not  the  most  patient  woman  in  the 
world;  and  if  she  had  been,  she  would  have  gone  frantic 
in  the  gloom  of  that  subway  cell.     Even  Job  was  not  put  to 
the  test  of  waiting  in  a  subway  station  for  somebody. 

Kate  had  two  people  to  wait  for,  and  she  paced  the  plat 
form  with  the  gnawing  rancor  of  a  tigress  in  Bronx  Park. 

She  would  sit  down  awhile,  then  rise  again  and  trudge 
back  and  forth  till  she  was  fagged  out;  then  sit  down  and 
watch  the  stairways  till  she  had  to  rise  or  scream. 

Now  and  then  she  would  climb  the  steps  and  pace  the  side 
walk  in  the  upper  air.  She  bought  papers,  magazines,  chew 
ing-gum,  and  chocolates.  She  went  back  to  her  dungeon 
and  walked  the  harrowing  post  anew. 

The  clock  was  her  sneering  enemy.  She  saw  it  shoving  its 
baleful  hand  toward  the  hour  of  the  closing  of  the  license 
bureau.  She  saw  it  slide  past,  moving  invisibly,  yet  in 
dubitably  and  irrevocably. 

She  could  not  fool  herself  longer.  She  could  not  marry 
Bob  to-day.  And  to-morrow  must  not  find  her  in  New  York ! 

She  took  the  wedding-ring  from  her  handbag  and  gave  it 
her  sincerest  maledictions.  It  was  so  small  that  she  could 
not  punish  it.  She  could  not  slap  it  in  the  face.  She 
wanted  to  hurl  it  under  the  eternal  next  train  that  was  always 
roaring  in  and  always  sliding  away  into  the  endless  basement 
of  the  tunnel. 

She  had  marveled  at  the  ring's  cneapness.  But  it  had 
proved  to  be  an  imbecile  extravagance;  it  was  one  hundred 
per  cent.  loss. 

Her  only  solace  was  the  possession  of  the  necklace.  Her 
only  pride  was  the  fact  that  she  had  had  sand  enough  to 
demand  it  and  get  away  with  it.  The  hankering  to  see  it, 
to  feast  her  eyes  on  it,  to  bathe  her  fingers  in  it — what  she 
would  have  called  the  "yen"  for  it — grew  unendurable. 

269 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

She  walked  at  last  to  the  dead-wall  at  the  end  of  the  plat 
form  and  untied  the  string  with  tremulous  fingers,  un 
wrapped  the  parcel  with  a  painful  effort  at  indifference,  and 
lifted  the  lid  of  the  necktie-box  for  a  peep  at  the  shining 
Hquescence  of  the  faceted  gems. 

She  gazed  on  air.  Her  eyes  drank  deep  of  the  emptiness 
that  filled  the  box. 

She  swayed  for  a  fall,  steadied  herself,  and  gulped  her 
bitter  medicine.  For  a  wild  moment  she  believed  in  an 
occult  happening.  The  mystic  fiend  that  had  carried  off 
Bob  Taxter's  five  thousand  in  the  morning  was  still  on  her 
trail! 

This  flattering  unction  did  not  soothe  that  soul  of  hers. 
None  knew  better  than  she  that  this  is  a  world  of  trickery  and 
theft  and  lies.  She  had  been  buncoed,  flimflammed,  double- 
crossed — all  the  disgusting  things  for  which  so  many  syno 
nyms  are  required  in  all  languages. 

She  blenched  with  the  sincerest  shame  and  the  profoundest 
humiliation  she  had  ever  known.  Then  she  muttered 
phrases  that  would  have  startled  Queen  Elizabeth  and  left 
Catherine  the  Great  in  envy. 

She  cursed  herself  and  everybody.  She  anathematized 
the  entire  human  race. 

She  felt  an  intense  need  to  kill  somebody  right  away.  She 
dashed  up  the  subway  stairs  and  hurried  as  fast  as  she  dared 
to  Bob  Taxter's  hotel.  The  hall-boys  made  way  for  her. 
The  elevator-boy  smelled  brimstone  as  he  hoisted  her  to  the 
floor  she  called. 

She  pounded  on  Bob's  door,  and  she  had  her  talons 
cramped  to  rend  him,  her  words  boiling  to  scald  him. 

But  he  did  not  answer.  He  had  gone  out.  The  elevator- 
boy  confirmed  the  bitter  disappointment  of  her  surmise. 
He  had  gone  out!  but  where?  There  were  so  many  places 
to  go  in  New  York !  It  was  like  hunting  somebody  who  was 
along  the  Milky  Way  somewhere. 

Womanly  intuition  made  a  brilliant  guess.  He  had  gon« 
back  to  that  Summerlin  woman.  Well,  she  should  not  have 
him!  Kate  made  an  almost  audible  ululation  of  protest 
against  such  an  atrocity.  She  would  commit  a  greater  one, 
if  necessary,  to  prerent  it. 

She  left  Bob's  hotel  and  made  her  way  to  April's  apart- 

270 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

ment-house.  She  had  gnawed  her  lips  raw  witn  rage,  but 
she  spoke  with  exquisite  sweetness  when  she  asked  the  hall- 
boy  if  Miss  Summerlin  were  at  home.  The  boy  said: 

"  Yassum,  but  she  sent  down  wud  she  ain't  to  be  distubbed 
by  nobody.  She's  right  sick." 

"That's  good — too  bad,"  Kate  mumbled.  "Did  you  see 
Mr.  Taxta?" 

"Oh,  yassum." 

"Is  he  here?" 

"Oh,  no'm.  He  ain't  been  yere  sence  this  mawnin'. 
His  motha  'phomed  ova  to  ast  the  same  question  a  little 
while  ago,  but  nobody  up-stairs  knows  where  he's  at." 

"I  see,"  said  Kate.     "All  right." 

And  she  went  out  slowly.  Her  intuition  had  guessed 
brilliantly,  but  wrong.  And  her  intuition  had  never  another 
guess  to  offer. 

Kate  was  alone  in  New  York;  alone  in  the  world.  Even 
Joe  had  vanished.  She  was  unable  to  imagine  what  could 
have  happened  to  him.  A  taxicab  might  have  run  over 
him.  He  might  have  been  delayed  and  gone  to  the  subway. 
He  might  be  waiting  there  with  the  railroad  tickets.  She 
hurried  to  the  subway.  Joe  was  not  there.  She  could 
not  know  that  he  had  sought  her  there  and,  not  finding  her, 
drifted  back  to  the  Pennsylvania  Station. 

But  he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  take  the  train.  He 
simply  could  not  leave  New  York  in  such  chaos  of  mind. 
He  was  afraid  to  stay  and  unable  to  go.  He  made  long 
ddtours  and  quick  dodges  to  escape  the  eye  of  such  police 
men  as  he  saw,  and  such  persons  as  he  suspected  of  being 
plain-clothes  men. 

By  and  by  hunger,  the  old  dictator,  began  to  claim  pre 
eminence  in  his  thoughts.  He  felt  a  timidity  about  venturing 
into  a  public  restaurant,  and  finally  bethought  him  of  an 
old-time  haunt,  a  "speak-easy,"  where  only  such  visitors 
as  were  known  were  admitted  and  permitted  to  buy  such 
food  and  liquor  as  the  landlord  ventured  to  sell  without  the 
formality  of  a  license. 

It  was  nothing  more  than  a  dingy,  mean  boarding-house, 
with  a  dirty  dining-room  in  the  basement.  The  boarders 
seemed  to  find  a  congeniality  in  the  very  lowness  of  the  cei 
ling  and  the  immundicity  of  the  linen,  the  cutlery,  the  waiter, 

271 


f     WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

the  food.  They  were  like  certain  plants,  insects,  and  reptiles; 
the  light  pained  them,  they  haunted  the  dark  and  narrow 
places :  graybacks  scuttering  under  logs.  Professor  Jacques 
Loeb  calls  it  the  crevice  instinct,  or  stereotropism. 

To  this  same  speak-easy,  drawn  by  the  same  infirmity  of 
purpose,  the  same  abject  surrender  of  habit,  Kate  gravitated 
a  while  after. 

Joe  saw  her  come  in  and  was  about  to  spring  at  her  with 
accusations.  But  he  was  inhibited  by  a  twinge  of  guilt  in 
his  own  behavior.  He  had  little  conscience,  but  he  had  a 
sense  of  congruity.  Also  he  had  a  lively  knowledge  of  Kate's 
ability  to  shrivel  him  with  a  few  hot  words  whenever  he 
pretended  to  be  wronged. 

He  dropped  into  his  chair  and  watched  her  take  a  seat  with 
her  back  to  him.  It  was  a  very  well-built  back,  and  it 
pleased  his  artistic  ideals.  It  was  an  eloquent  back,  too, 
and  he  could  read  despondency  and  loneliness  and  fatigue  in 
it.  He  was  emotional  and  easily  touched,  as  most  criminals 
are.  He  felt  a  gush  of  pity  in  his  heart  and  a  recrudescence 
of  old  tenderness.  They  had  pal'd  together  and  gone  through 
hell  together.  Let  it  be  said  to  his  credit  as  a  lover,  the  last 
thing  he  thought  of  was  the  diamond  necklace.  Let  it  be 
said  to  his  credit  as  a  financier,  the  diamond  necklace 
decided  him.  For  its  sake  he  resolved  to  forgive  Kate  and 
take  her  again  into  his  favor. 

In  the  mean  while  Kate  had  learned  of  him.  The  waiter, 
as  he  took  her  order,  had  diplomatically  murmured: 

"Which  of  yous  two  give  the  other  'n  the  flag  foist,  Kate?" 

"Which  of  who  two?"  said  Kate. 

"You  'n'  Joe.  Looks  funny,  him  settin'  back  there  and 
you  down  here." 

"Is  that  so?"  said  Kate.  "Well,  that  face  you  wear 
looks  funny  to  me,  too,  but  I  ain't  makin'  a  song  and  dance 
abote  it."  The  waiter  shrugged  his  eyebrows  and  shuffled 
to  the  kitchen. 

Kate  went  through  the  same  mental  processes  as  Joe. 
Her  first  impulse  was  to  whirl  round  and  ease  her  aching 
finger-nails  and  vent  her  pent-up  wrath  on  him.  She  wanted 
to  bounce  one  of  those  stone-age  coffee-cups  off  his  bean. 
But  she  was  restrained  by  what  she  called  her  sense  of  yuma; 
it  was  a  substitute  conscience.  She  realized  that  she  had 

272 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

left  Joe  flat  at  the  first  hint  of  Bob's  willingness  to  marry  her. 
She  had  warned  him  not  to  expect  to  share  in  her  husband's 
wealth.  Joe's  obedience  grew  handsome  by  contrast  with 
her  own  conduct.  Since  she  could  not  see  him,  her  memory 
bestirred  her  imagination  to  an  idealized  portrait  of  him. 
They  had  gone  through  hell  together.  They  had  shared 
poverty  and  riches,  the  fat  and  the  lean,  the  bacon  of  life. 

He  had  not  taken  the  train  and  left  her,  as  she  had  sus 
pected.  He  was  probably  sulking  because  she  had  preferred 
another  guy  to  him.  She  had  nobody  else  to  turn  to  now; 
and  no  funds  worth  mentioning. 

Her  flare  of  adoration  for  Bob  had  died  out  and  left  a  cold 
black  wick.  Bob  had  either  lost  or  hidden  his  money  twice. 
He  had  failed  to  keep  the  date  with  the  parson.  He  had 
put  a  crimp  in  the  badger  game,  had  worked  the  old  box- 
trick  and  held  out  the  necklace  on  her.  The  loss  of  that 
was  a  death-blow  to  her  trustful  disposition.  It  was  a 
smashing  blow,  too,  to  her  prosperity.  Joe  was  her  old 
stand-by.  She  resolved  to  forgive  him  any  past  performances 
and  take  him  back  again,  if  he  would  take  her  back  again. 

And  so  the  parted  twain  in  mutual  meditation  came  round 
to  a  common  plan  of  reunion.  Each  felt  some  uneasiness  as 
to  the  probable  reaction  of  the  other. 

Joe  kept  eying  Kate's  back,  and  finally,  in  confirmation 
of  the  familiar  superstition  that  it  is  possible  to  stare  a  per 
son's  head  around,  Kate  slowly  turned.  She  was  really 
trying  to  let  her  rambling  glance  discover  Joe  accidentally. 
It  played  along  the  walls  and  the  other  guests,  some  of 
whom  brightened  up  in  vain  as  Kate's  handsome  eyes  paused 
upon  them.  At  length  her  gaze  found  Joe.  She  started. 
He  started.  She  smiled  tentatively.  He  smiled  tentatively. 
Joe  rose.  She  nodded.  He  came  forward  sheepishly.  She 
greeted  him  archly,  gave  him  a  handclasp  as  familiar  and 
cozy  as  an  old  glove.  She  motioned  him  to  sit  down. 

The  waiter,  returning,  saw  the  blissful  couple  and  grinned. 
He  set  the  two  banquets  on  the  same  table,  and  went  back  to 
lean  against  the  kitchen  door  and  pick  his  teeth  contentedly. 
He  felt  far  more  like  a  successful  Cupid  than  he  looked. 

Joe  and  Kate  recounted  their  separate  histories  up  to  the 
present  armistice.  Kate  had  hoped  to  be  spared  the  tragedy 
of  the  necklace-swindle,  but  Joe  asked  about  it.  She 

273 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

blushed  as  she  confessed  the  dismal  truth.  Joe  turned  white 
as  he  recognized  the  bitter  fact  that  his  intermittent  bride 
had  come  home  to  him  with  no  dowry  but  her  necessities. 

It  was  perilous  to  remain  in  New  York  after  McCann's  fair 
warning,  but  it  was  unendurable  to  leave  New  York  with  no 
loot  to  show  for  their  visit.  Above  all,  it  was  intolerable 
that  Bob  Taxter  should  have  the  laugh  on  them  after  the 
pains  they  had  taken  to  make  a  boob  of  him. 

They  could  get  money  in  many  ways.  The  fashionable 
thing  to  do  just  then  was  to  steal  an  automobile,  preferably 
a  police-department  automobile,  then  rob  somebody  and 
get  away  with  the  proceeds.  It  was  too  late  in  the  evening 
to  poke  a  gun  into  a  paying-teller's  cage  or  throw  red  pepper 
in  the  eyes  of  a  bank-messenger  and  grab  his  bag;  and  Joe 
had  little  technical  mastery  of  the  art  of  safe-cracking.  But 
there  were  restaurants  and  cigar-stores  and  theater  box- 
offices  to  invade;  and  a  few  ingenious  youth  had  recently 
been  sticking-up  the  cashiers  of  dance-halls  with  fair  re 
sults.  Still  better  sport  was  bursting  into  a  room  in  a  big 
hotel  where  parties  had  gathered  to  play  craps,  stuss,  or 
poker;  the  gamesters  had  to  shell  out  and  dared  not  make  a 
holler  to  the  cops. 

New  York,  like  all  the  other  cities,  was  in  a  Mardi  Gras  of 
theft  and  thuggery.  In  a  New  Jersey  town  a  young  girl 
had  gone  about  at  night  in  man's  clothes  and  held  up  more 
than  a  hundred  citizens  before  she  was  caught.  Another 
footpad  wrote  letters  to  the  police,  warning  them  of  the 
neighborhood  and  hour  of  the  next  visit. 

The  arch-crime,  war,  had  bred  countless  smaller  crimes, 
as  always.  A  Chicago  attorney  stated  that  among  Chicago's 
three  million  people  more  murders  were  committed  in  a  year 
than  in  Great  Britain's  forty  million:  a  murder  a  dpy,  on  the 
average,  with  "crime  as  highly  organized  as  a  n.ail-order 
business."  In  New  York  City  the  burglary-insurance  com 
panies  were  compelled  to  increase  their  rates  or  go  into  bank 
ruptcy.  They  reported  a  total  of  ten  thousand  thefts  in 
1919,  with  an  aggregate  swag  of  twenty-five  million  dollars. 

Kate  and  Joe  were,  therefore,  in  a  fashionable  mood.  The 
important  thing  was  to  get  square  with  Bob  Taxter.  The 
problems  were  how  and  where  to  find  him  and  what  to  do  to 
him.  Whatever  it  was,  it  must  be  a  plenty. 

274 


CHAPTER  XII 

IF  Bob  had  known  of  this  menace  gathering  in  his  sky,  he 
would  have  needed  no  other  stimulant.  He  would  have 
welcomed  a  fight.  He  needed  a  fight.  He  was  back  in  one 
of  the  doldrums  that  he  had  known  in  France  when  he  loafed 
about  the  hangars  in  wretched  desuetude. 

He  had  loved  those  Germans  then,  who  darkled  against  the 
clouds  and  invited  him  up  to  a  "tea-party,"  as  they  called 
it.  And  he  had  leaped  aloft  to  welcome  them  with  that 
superlative  hospitality  a  warrior  shows  to  an  enemy  who 
comes  to  call. 

Bob  would  have  preferred  a  go  at  Joe  Yarmy  to  all  the 
whisky  in  the  world.  It  was  for  lack  of  such  an  outlet  to 
the  steam  of  youth  in  him  that  he  sought  a  wrestle  with  the 
invisible  and  terrible  angel  of  alcohol. 

He  longed  for  companionship  in  his  foray,  but  his  acquaint 
anceship  in  New  York  was  meager.  He  telephoned  to  two 
or  three  places  where  Jimmy  Dryden  hung  out,  but  he  was 
not  to  be  found.  So  Bob  set  out  alone  on  the  uncharted  sky 
and  the  perilous  steeps  of  bibacity. 

He  was  all  the  more  impatient  to  cut  a  wide  swath  since 
the  shadow  of  Prohibition  was  lengthening  on  the  dial,  and 
all  the  lusty  toss-pots  in  America  were  storing  up  what  they 
could  and  lapping  up  what  they  could  not  store,  against  the 
fatal  eve  of  July,  1919. 

Bob  was  reckless  enough  when  he  was  sober.  Alcohol 
relaxed  what  few  checks  and  controls  he  had,  and  turned  his 
soul  into  such  a  blue  flame  as  lighted  brandy  sets  up  about  so 
tame  a  thing  as  an  omelette  aux  confitures. 

lie  felt  a  sincere  resentment,  too,  against  the  prohibi 
tionists.  He  inherited  an  aristocratic  respect  for  wine,  a 
tolerance  for  ebriety  as  a  gentlemanly  privilege — almost  a 
duty.  His  ancestry  had  despised  the  Puritans  as  water- 
bibbers,  though  this  was  unjust  to  the  Puritans,  since  the 

275 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

reign  of  James  II,  the  first  Puritan  king,rwas  the  dnmkenest 
reign  in  British  history,  the  only  one  in  which  it  was  habitual 
for  even  the  titled  ladies  of  the  court  to  reel  and  roll  and 
sprawl  in  boozy  helplessness  at  receptions  of  state. 

As  a  soldier  who  had  liked  nothing  in  France  (except  the 
war)  so  well  as  the  cheapness  and  abundance  of  the  wine, 
Bob  felt  tricked  by  the  passage  of  the  Eighteenth  Amend 
ment  during  his  absence. 

The  soldiers  made  many  a  song  of  the  fact  that  while 
they  fought  abroad  the  stay-at-homes  voted  liquor  out  of 
existence. 

One  of  these  ran  thus: 

We  won  the  war,  we  won  the  war, 

Who'll  buy  us  a  bottle  of  pop? 
The  slackers  voted  the  country  dry 

While  we  went  over  the  top. 

But  this  was  only  the  half  of  it,  for  when  the  soldiers 
came  home  they  found  another  virtuous  joke  played  on 
them. 

The  constitutional  amendment  was  passed  in  all  legal 
ity,  but  it  was  not  to  take  effect  until  January  16, 
1920,  and  that  was  too  far  off  to  mean  much.  Plans  had 
also  been  agreed  upon  for  immediate  national  prohibition 
during  the  hostilities.  The  war  ended  before  this  Vol 
stead  bill  could  be  passed.  But  it  was  passed,  anyway, 
ten  days  later,  forbidding  the  making  or  selling  of  liquors 
between  July  i,  1919,  and  the  demobilization  of  the  troops. 
Demobilization  also  was  practically  completed  long  before 
the  law  came  into  effect.  But  the  prohibitionists  did  not 
mind  a  little  thing  like  that.  The  President  tried  to  get  rid 
of  the  anachronistic  ban,  but  Congress  would  not  let  him. 
The  Congressmen  filled  the  storage  warehouses  of  Wash 
ington  with  liquor,  but  they  would  not  vote  for  it.  Later 
they  found  that  it  was  illegal  to  store  liquor  in  storage 
warehouses. 

Such  steam-roller  methods  called  forth  ferocious  protests, 
and  the  protestants  had  noble  arguments  to  justify  them. 
Many  of  the  sacred  principles  of  justice,  liberty,  equality,  and 
security  were  violated,  and  it  was  possible  for  the  Brewers' 
Board  of  Trade  to  publish  large  advertisements  reading  like 

276 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

the  forepart  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  con 
taining  such  a  lofty  indictment  as  this: 

The  original  war  prohibition  was  enacted  ten  days  after  the  war 
had  ended  as  declared  by  President  Wilson  himself.  The  present  act 
imposes  its  unexampled  and  oppressive  provisions  upon  the  American 
people  almost  a  full  year  after  the  last  shot  was  fired  in  the  great  con 
flict,  and  when  the  millions  of  men  who  were  summoned  to  sustain  our 
cause  upon  the  high  seas  and  upon  the  battlefield  have  returned  to  the 
pursuits  of  peace.  Yet  in  its  immediate  effect  and  application  it  is 
founded  upon  a  test  of  actual  and  existing  war  necessity.  The  annals 
of  legislation  disclose  few  instances  of  more  shameful  abuse  of  legislative 
power. 

To  describe  how  frequently  and  how  flagrantly  this  measure  violates 
long-established  American  principle  and  long-cherished  American 
tradition  would  require  much  space.  It  is  perhaps  sufficient  to  indi 
cate  the  ease  with  which  persons  accused  under  its  provisions  can  be 
deprived  of  their  right  of  trial  by  jury. 

How  summary  proceedings  before  and  punishment  by  judges  can  be 
substituted  for  the  customary  processes  of  law. 

How  the  guilt  of  a  person  having  possession  of  liquor  of  any  kind 
is  presumed,  instead  of  his  innocence.  And  how  the  burden  of  proof 
is  upon  him  rather  than  upon  his  accuser. 

How  the  person  living  in  one  sort  of  an  establishment  can  escape 
search  and  seizure  while  his  neighbor,  living  in  another  sort  of  dwelling, 
is  subject  to  invasion. 

How  an  army  of  federal  agents  at  a  cost  of  millions  of  dollars  is 
created  for  enforcement  purposes. 

How  onerous  regulations  govern  the  prescribing  of  liquor  by  physi 
cians,  and  how  the  quantities  that  may  be  prescribed  are  arbitrarily 
limited. 

The  law  describes  as  intoxicating  liquor  any  beverage  containing 
as  much  as  half  of  one  per  cent,  of  alcohol  by  volume.  This  is  contrary 
to  the  fact,  for  drinks  containing  seven  times  that  amount  of  alcohol 
are  known  to  be  non-intoxicating. 

The  Eighteenth  Amendment  contains  a  clause  deferring  its  opera 
tion  until  a  year  after  the  date  of  its  ratification.  This  was  agreed  upon 
in  order  to  allow  manufacturers  and  dealers  a  reasonable  time  in  which 
to  liquidate  their  business  and  wind  up  their  affairs.  The  Volstead  Act, 
in  continuing  war  prohibition  at  this  time,  clearly  violates  the  pledge 
held  out  by  the  amendment.  Hence,  to  its  many  other  iniquities  must 
be  added  a  deliberate  and  calculated  breach  of  faith.  It  is  thus  that  pro 
hibition  is  introduced  to  the  American  people. 

The  drinking-classes  grew  more  and  more  dour  as  they 
saw  their  doom  approaching.  They  naturally  made  great 
capital  of  the  tyrannous  trickery  of  the  Drys. 

And  nothing  is  more  common  or  more  distressing  than  to 
see  virtue  making  use  of  the  very  same  slippery  tactics  that 

277 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

it  finds  so  reprehensible  in  vice.  Religious  crusades,  reform 
movements,  charitable  drives,  all  employ  the  dodges  and 
bullyings  they  deplore  iu  crooked  politicians,  grafters,  and 
corruptionists. 

There  has  never  been  a  religion  that  failed  to  juggle  the 
facts  or  dared  to  tell  the  whole  truth  about  itself  or  its  rivals, 
its  whole  history  or  theirs,  or  to  expose  all  the  documents. 
There  has  never  been  a  peace  so  noble  and  merciful  that  it 
could  afford  to  reveal  its  minutes  and  arrive  at  open  covenants 
openly. 

Missionaries  hoodwink  the  savages  they  long  to  save,  and 
parents  invariably  resort  to  lies,  subterfuge,  and  terrorism 
when  they  try  to  teach  their  children  to  be  truthful,  honest, 
and  gentle. 

And  so  the  holy  cause  of  temperance,  inspired  by  the  pro- 
foundest  desire  for  the  welfare  of  mankind,  and  aiming  to 
exorcise  from  the  world  the  foul,  the  frightful  and  innumer 
able  demons  that  spawn  in  drink,  played  the  game  with 
stacked  cards,  bluffed  it  through,  and  raked  in  the  chips 
under  the  muzzle  of  a  pistol. 

Hence,  barkeepers  were  turned  into  martyrs,  and  the 
empty  saloons,  the  idle  breweries  and  distilleries,  took  on  the 
hallowed  respect  of  temples  overthrown  by  barbarians. 

For  months  the  chief  theme  of  national  conversation  was 
drink,  and  the  chief  avocation  of  the  citizens  seemed  to  be 
the  preparation  for  the  great  denial  of  1919.  In  2348  B.C., 
when  the  Deluge  was  announced,  Noah,  then  in  his  six-hun 
dredth  year,  made  preparations  for  it,  almost  alone.  But 
4267  years  later  the  multitudes  took  thought  for  the  drought 
of  prohibition. 

The  courts  were  racked  with  appeals  to  decide  how  much 
alcohol  constituted  alcohol.  A  professor  set  a  group  of 
envied  college  students  to  drinking  2.75  per  cent,  beer  in 
quantity  to  see  if  it  would  intoxicate  them.  He  announced 
that  it  did  not.  Yet  the  Drys  refused  to  respect  the  experi 
ment  and  proclaimed  that  more  than  half  of  one  per  cent, 
of  alcohol  was  illegal. 

The  antediluvians  laughed  at  Noah.  But  the  ante- 
Julyvians  did  not  laugh.  They  builded  themselves  cellars 
and  made  them  reservoirs  of  intoxicants.  In  the  clubs,  they 
established  lockers  and  packed  them  with  bottles.  Later 

278 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

these  lockers  were  declared  illegal.  There  was  a  mighty 
sale  of  private  distilling-machines.  The  innocent  raisin  and 
the  unsuspected  yeast-cake  and  the  despised  prune  of  the 
boarding-house  were  glorified  for  their  gifts  of  fermentation. 
Prophets  declared  that  all  the  alcoholists  would  become  drug- 
fiends.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  more  of  them  became  ice-cream- 
soda  fiends  and  sweet-stuff  gluttons.  Club  bars  sold  candy ! 

And  so  the  United  States  rolled  on  into  the  gloom,  or  the 
dawn,  as  the  case  might  be.  There  was  no  Whisky  Insur 
rection,  no  riotous  resistance.  On  the  last  night  of  June 
there  was  not  even  an  orgy.  As  usual  the  Americans  bowed 
to  the  law  and  made  their  plans  to  evade  it.  We  treat  our 
laws  as  our  wives  their  husbands.  They  promise  to  love, 
honor,  and  obey,  but  they  don't  obey. 

There  is  not  much  risk  in  prophesying  that  this  crusade 
will  follow  the  norm  of  all  the  others  in  history,  and  that  the 
fate  which  undermines  all  other  projects,  good  or  bad,  will 
let  this  sublime  effort  also  delapse.  If  virtue  had  ever  been 
established  by  legal  enactments,  what  angels  we  should  be! 
for  of  the  making  of  many  laws  there  is  no  end. 

It  is  not  the  fault  of  the  chronicler  that  things  are  as  they 
are.  He  cannot  help  the  world  or  himself  by  lying  about  it. 
So  here  goes ! 

Bob's  zeal  for  drunkenness  was  rendered  all  the  more 
imperative  by  the  feeling  that  the  time  for  such  relaxations 
was  brief.  His  thought  was,  Get  drunk  in  a  hurry,  for  to 
morrow  '11  be  dry. 

To  many — indeed,  to  most — readers  it  would  seem  far 
more  laudable  to  say  that  he  took  his  disappointments 
honorably,  with  bravery,  dignity,  and  decency,  and  rose 
nobly  to  meet  them — or  met  some  dear  old  aunt  who  talked 
him  back  to  sanctity.  But  since  he  did  not,  and  since  so 
many  others  did  not  and  do  not,  it  is  a  painful  duty  to  report 
what  happened — to  hew  to  the  line  and  let  the  chips  fall 
where  they  may. 

Custom  and  the  clock  drove  Bob  first  to  food.  It  was  the 
dinner-hour  and  he  decided  to  pamper  himself.  He  wandered 
from  restaurant  to  restaurant,  and  none  of  them  all  suited 
his  whim,  American,  Italian,  Greek,  or  French.  He  finally 
entered  one  of  the  large  hotels,  hoping  vainly  t:  Ftumble  on 
a  companionship.  But  he  ate  alone. 
19  279 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

There  is  a  certain  feeling  of  majesty  in  dining  alone  in 
state.  And  the  feeling  of  majesty  is  one  of  the  preludes  to 
ignominy.  Bob  ordered  a  cocktail — an  orange-blossom — to 
be  fetched  at  once,  before  he  would  dictate  his  further  wants 
to  the  captain  standing  by  like  a  stenographer. 

He  tossed  it  off  and  reckoned  that  another  blossom  would 
be  twice  as  good.  He  commanded  it,  also  some  Astrakhan 
caviar  to  aid  and  abet  his  thirst.  He  was  ordinarily  a  spare 
feeder,  but  to-night  he  wanted  to  overwhelm  his  poor 
stomach.  He  took  a  thin  soup  and  a  filet  of  sole  (ne  flounder), 
a  roast  and  some  vegetables,  a  salad,  and  a  sweet  with  wine 
sauce.  Alongside  he  had  a  glass  of  sherry,  and  its  somber 
smack  inspired  him  to  champagne.  A  poor  champagne  cost 
ten  dollars  a  bottle  by  now,  and  a  good  champagne  twenty- 
five,  going  on  a  hundred.  The  sharp  savor  thrilled  Bob's 
tongue  to  repetition.  It  seemed  proper  to  give  his  order  in 
French.  His  tongue  was  thickening  a  bit,  but  the  waiter's 
Hungarian  French  was  no  better  than  Bob's. 

When  Bob  said,  "Garsoan,  apportay-m'wa  een  boot-tay- 
yee  der  lar  me*me  shang-pang  ong-core,"  the  waiter  an 
swered,  "Vwee,  moansure,"  and  brought  a  quart. 

Bob  topped  off  with  a  liqueur — a  green  Chartrurzh — and 
called  for  the  check-k.  He  noted  an  odd  click  to  the  "k." 

The  sight  of  the  bill  almost  sobered  him.  The  waiter's 
shorthand  was  impenetrable.  But  this  was  the  catalogue 
in  plain  terms: 

2  orange-blossom  cocktails $      80 

1  glass  of  sherry 40 

2  bottles  of  vin  brut 20  oo 

Astrakhan  caviar 2  oo 

consomm^ 30 

filet  of  sole 75 

roast  beef i  oo 

candied  sweet  potatoes 25 

combination  salad 60 

pudding  with  wine  sauce 30 

bread  and  butter 10 


Total $26  50 

And  it  had  been  a  simple  meal,  too,  aside  from  the  liquid 
section!     By  the  time  he  added  the  customary  tithe  for 

280 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

the  waiter  it  made  thirty  dollars  look  so  sickly  that  Bob 
put  a  twenty  and  a  ten  on  the  tray  and  murmured: 

"Keep  change." 

He  sighed,  less  at  the  profligacy  of  dumping  on  his  poor 
stomach  enough  to  keep  an  Armenian  family  indefinitely 
than  at  the  perfidy  of  dining  alone.  In  the  afternoon,  he  had. 
promised  to  dine  with  his  mother  at  Aunt  Sally's.  Later, 
he  had  promised  to  dine  on  a  dining-car  with  his  bride- 
to-have-been.  And  now  he  dined  alone. 

He  thought  so  tenderly  of  his  mother  that  tears  of  unusual 
facility  welled  in  his  fogging  eyes.  His  notably  loose  lips 
pursed  and  quivered.  He  told  himself  that  he  was  a  misis- 
erable  brute  and  didn't  deserve  such  a  mothother. 

The  confession  of  guilt  only  served  to  render  him  more 
desperate.  He  felt  as  guilty  as  Cain,  and  seemed  to  be  under 
an  equal  compulsion  to  wander  instead  of  seeking  his  poor 
mother. 

He  tipped  the  waiter  a  little  deal  more  than  he  need  have, 
and  a  good  deal  less  than  the  waiter  had  expected  from  his 
condition.  So  he  got  no  thanks.  The  headwaiter  seemed  to 
glower  at  him  as  he  passed  out.  Different  guests  snickered 
or  shook  their  heads  in  sorrow  over  him,  according  to  their 
natures. 

It  struck  him  that  the  girl  who  brought  his  hat  was  re 
markably  good-looking,  and  it  seemed  to  be  his  solemn  duty 
to  tell  her  so.  He  said,  with  academic  purity  of  intention : 

"Do  you  mind  my  teiflin'  you  how  estrornily  prithee  you 
are  to-night?  You  don't,  do  you — or  do  you?" 

She  did  not  mind,  and  when  he  dropped  both  the  hat  she 
offered  him  and  the  quarter  he  offered  her  she  picked  them 
up  before  he  could  reach  them.  Then  he  said : 

"Thass  right,  HT  lady,  always  be  p'lite  to  us  old  folks, 
and  we'll  always-zz  leave  you  a  millillion  dollollars  in  our 
wills." 

He  liked  this  ever  so  much,  and  laughed  heartily  as  he 
drifted  thence. 

The  hat-girl  followed  him  with  her  eyes,  and  looked  pret 
tier  yet  for  the  little  glint  of  tears  stuck  on  her  long  lashes. 

He  picked  his  way  cautiously  through  a  peculiarly  stupid 
lot  of  people  who  kept  bumping  into  him.  He  went  down  a 
flight  of  steps  that  rose  to  meet  his  feet  with  unexpected 

281 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

promptness.  It  was  like  walking  across  bedsprings.  The 
sidewalk  outside  was  a  trifle  better  fastened  down,  and  the 
svening  air  had  such  cool  hands  for  his  hot  forehead  that 
he  took  off  his  hat  to  allow  them  freer  play. 

He  wandered  into  the  theater  district,  and  the  blazing 
letters  piled  against  the  sky,  the  drunken  riot  of  lights  that 
flashed  up  and  out,  the  serpentine  dances  of  red  and  green 
fires  that  chased  each  other  here  and  there  about  the  flaming 
signboards,  bewildered  him.  It  was  a  kind  of  municipal 
delirium  tremens. 

The  plays  that  attracted  his  curiosity  were  sold  out,  and 
the  others  did  not  interest  him.  He  rolled  up  Broadway, 
past  moving-picture  cathedrals,  and  temples  of  vaudeville 
and  of  drama  and  comic  opera.  But  he  finally  landed  in 
a  theater  devoted  to  what  used  to  be  called  a  leg-show. 
Amazing,  that  such  spectacles  should  be  such  excellent 
merchandise ! 

This  crowded  house  was  almost  exclusively  patronized  by 
men  to  whose  standardized  desires  it  purveyed  standardized 
burlesque.  Bob  found  no  stimulant  in  the  strident  voices 
and  the  striding  tights  of  the  chorus  or  the  tawdry  caricatures 
of  the  Jewish  and  Irish  comedians — impossible  gargoyles 
disporting  among  decrepit  sirens. 

The  atmosphere  was  so  thick  with  smoke  that  the  audi 
ence  seemed  to  be  trying  to  spread  a  merciful  veil  over  the 
infirmities  the  jades  were  compelled  to  expose  for  a  liveli 
hood — a  very  deadly  livelihood,  Bob  found  it.  The  smoke 
made  him  drowsy. 

He  did  not  want  to  sleep  yet — nor  there.  So  he  clambered 
out  and  accepted  a  return-check  lest  he  hurt  the  doorman's 
feelings.  A  newsboy  asked  for  the  check,  but  Bob  virtuously 
refused  to  assist  in  the  youth's  depravity,  and  threw  the 
check  into  one  of  the  rubbish-cans  that  gaped  at  every  corner. 

He  was  lonely  beyond  endurance.  He  would  have  treated 
any  acquaintance  as  a  long-lost  brother,  but  he  could  en 
counter  none.  A  few  cab-drivers  muttered  invitations  to 
marvelous  wickedness,  but  Bob  was  not  one  of  those  in 
whom  Dionysos  calls  for  Aphrodite. 

There  were  ghosts  along  the  darker  streets,  too;  ghosts 
of  good  women  condemned  for  a  certain  term  to  walk  the 
night  inviting  others  into  the  hell  from  which  they  could 

282 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

not  fly.  But  Bob  was  not  interested  in  this  shabby  commit 
tee  of  welcome  whose  delegates  alone  extend  hospitality  to 
errant  strangers  in  the  cities. 

Other  companionship  was  not  offered  him.  The  town  was 
dull  out-of-doors.  The  theaters  were  full,  and  at  the  moving- 
picture  houses  long  lines  still  stood  at  the  box-offices,  waiting 
for  the  crowds  to  come  out  and  make  room  for  the  9.30 
audience. 

Bob  walked  and  grew  more  and  more  fagged.  At  nearly 
every  corner  was  a  saloon,  the  great  American  institution 
whose  fate  was  supposed  to  be  sealed — and  small  loss  to 
civilization. 

Now  and  then  Bob  stopped  at  one  of  these  and  threw  into 
his  helpless  stomach  another  riddle  for  digestion.  He  could 
hardly  tell  one  saloon  from  another.  They  were  all,  indeed, 
as  much  alike  in  furniture  and  populace  as  in  the  mortgages 
that  smothered  most  of  them.  The  windows  and  signs  were 
akin;  each  had  its  side-door  "Family  Entrance" — and  the 
same  families  inside:  a  few  foot-sore  streetwalkers;  a 
stupefied  client,  or  a  platonic  friend,  perhaps ;  a  general  air 
of  dismal  mystery  about  nothing  worth  while. 

The  bar-rooms  were  all  alike — a  long  dark  bar  with  a  long 
brass  foot-rail  and  an  array  of  spittoons.  The  war  had 
driven  out  of  existence  the  once  familiar  free-lunch  counter 
with  its  public  fork  or  two  in  a  glass  of  unclean  water,  and  its 
debris  of  pretzels,  beets,  rye-bread  crusts — always  looking 
as  if  there  had  been  something  there  once. 

Along  the  bar  there  was  everywhere  a  sparse  congrega 
tion  of  males,  some  of  them  neat  and  in  a  hurry,  most  of 
them  dejected  and  in  no  hurry  at  all.  These  latter  told 
their  stupid  troubles  to  the  neat  and  patient  barkeepers, 
who  stood  up  straight,  combed  the  froth  off  the  beer,  refilled 
the  various  whisky-bottles  from  the  same  stock,  washed  all 
the  glasses  in  the  same  basin,  usually  forgot  to  ring  up  the 
coin  on  the  ornate  gilded  cash-register,  and  made  change  out 
of  the  open  drawer. 

Of  all  the  human  institutions,  the  saloon  has  been  the 
least  beautiful,  cheerful,  and  useful ;  and  even  the  lovers  of 
liquor  had  little  to  say  in  its  defense.  Some  called  it  the 
poor-man's  club;  it  was  certainly  a  poor  man's-club  and  it 
kept  its  patrons  poor.  It  was  the  cesspool  of  riot  and  dis- 

283 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

order,  and  the  first  step  in  keeping  the  peace  was  always  to 
close  the  saloon.  If  it  could  be  closed  out  forever,  so  mote 
it  be. 

It  was  of  Bob's  individuality  to  grow  more  haughty  and 
intolerant  as  he  went  into  eclipse.  Being  in  a  dinner-coat, 
he  passed  for  a  swell  in  the  bar-rooms;  he  lived  up  to  and 
far  beyond  the  r61e. 

Befuddled  strangers  who  tried  to  tell  him  how  much  they 
had  done  for  their  wives  and  how  ill  they  had  been  requited 
wrere  stared  out  of  countenance  with  what  grew  more  and 
more  like  a  pair  of  glass  eyes. 

Bob  zigzagged  up  Broadway  and  Seventh  Avenue  into  the 
dark  region  of  the  automobile-supply  shops,  then  he  turned 
and  bore  south  again.  He  could  not  get  a  seat  at  the  Winter 
Garden,  and  he  was  too  impatient  to  join  the  queues  at  the 
Rialto,  Rivoii,  or  the  Strand  movie-mansions.  Churchill's, 
the  Palais  Royal,  and  the  Cafe  de  Paris  were  at  this  hour 
tenanted  only  by  waiters.  The  cabarets  and  revues  would 
not  begin  till  the  human  crevasse  broke  from  the  theaters. 

Though  it  was  increasingly  hard  to  walk  straight  on  the 
increasingly  wabbly  pavements,  he  made  a  visit  to  a  number 
of  restaurants  with  French  names.  The  names  brought  back 
such  tender  memories  of  Paris  that  he  called  to  pay  his 
respects.  He  found  that  the  resemblance  ended  with  the 
names,  which  were  changed  with  great  frequency  as  pro 
prietor  after  proprietor  went  broke  in  the  hazardous  business 
of  purveying  food  and  amusement  to  the  whimsical  public. 

It  was  terrifying  to  find  how  small  an  oasis  encompassed 
all  the  bright  spots  of  New  York;  a  few  steps  off  a  few 
gaudy  streets  and  he  was  in  the  abodes  of  silence  and  gloom — 
dull  lanes  of  shut  shops  and  houses  asleep. 

Fifth  Avenue,  with  many  of  its  decorations  for  soldier- 
welcome  still  on  view,  was  a  boulevard  abandoned  to  the 
moon,  a  solitude  whose  perfection  was  hardly  marred  by  the 
motors  that  went  through  it  at  a  speed  unchecked  by  the 
traffic  police  of  broad  day. 

Bob  shuddered  at  finding  himself  so  far  out  of  bounds,  and 
preferred  the  more  inhabited  realm  of  Sixth  Avenue,  with 
its  noisy  elevated  and  surface  cars,  its  drug-stores,  flower- 
shops,  saloons,  and  restaurants. 

He  was  tired  enough  to  sit  down  on  a  curbstone  and  rest 

284 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

his  aching  feet  in  the  gutter  till  the  sidewalk  stopped  its 
merry-go-round.  But  he  was  not  quite  drunk  enough  to  be 
indifferent  to  appearances. 

He  had  by  no  means  drowned  his  struggling  pride,  and  his 
remorse  was  buoyant.  He  went  into  a  restaurant  where  a 
bevy  of  hard-working  cabaret  girls  was  doing  stunts  before 
a  small  and  scattered  audience  more  interested  in  its  food 
and  its  own  affairs. 

The  lot  of  restaurant  musicians  is  a  wretched  one,  contin 
ually  casting  pearls  of  melody  before  indifferent  gobblers  and 
guzzlers.  The  violinist  here  was  playing  wildly  well,  a  'cellist 
was  making  moan,  and  a  pianist  of  skill  was  pouring  out  his 
soul.  No  one  listened,  waiters  crisscrossed,  plates  clattered, 
laughter  cackled  and  drowned  a  very  rapture  of  sorrow. 

Bob  dropped  into  a  chair  and  ordered  another  orange- 
blossom  for  his  Bacchic  wreath.  The  music  reached  him. 
He  felt  the  sob  of  it  and  his  own  heart  rocked  to  its  sway. 

He  had  reasons  enough  for  regret,  drunk  or  sober,  but, 
drunk,  he  had  an  exalted  capacity  for  emotion.  He  thought 
of  his  poor  mother,  of  his  poor  April,  of  his  poor  tormented 
head.  He  thought  tenderly  even  of  Kate,  and  if  she  had 
appeared  before  him  with  a  parson  or  a  justice  of  the  peace 
he  would  have  married  her  as  handsomely  as  he  could.  Had 
the  preacher  asked  him  if  he  would  take  this  woman  for  his 
wedded  wife,  he  would  have  answered  in  the  words  of  a  certain 
eminent  poet  in  a  similar  condition  on  a  similar  occasion,  "I 
cert'nly  will,  and  I  thank  you  for  thopportunithy !" 

But  Kate  did  not  appear,  and  Bob's  sympathy  went  out  to 
a  young  girl  whose  talents  were  as  scant  as  her  clothes,  but 
whose  anxieties  were  as  great  as  her  eyes;  for  Prohibition 
was  expected  to  put  an  end  to  the  cabarets  and  to  the 
salaries  of  vast  flocks  of  nightbirds  who  had  swarmed  from 
oblivion  into  the  restaurants,  and  might  soon  swarm  back 
again  to  silent  and  graceless  toil. 

This  young  person  sang  and  danced,  and  Bob  alone  ap 
plauded  her.  He  had  no  desire  for  love,  but  he  had  a  sur 
plus  of  despair  to  divide  with  somebody.  He  beckoned  to  the 
singer,  and  she  graciously  sat  down  with  him  and  consented 
to  split  a  split  with  him.  This  was  a  part  of  her  work. 

Bob  had  a  wild  idea  that  he  ought  to  marry  her  and  save 
her  from  the  future.  But  he  thought  he  had  better  get 

285 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

acquainted  with  her  and  not  indulge  again  in  what  his 
mother  had  called  "marriage  at  first  sight."  It  is,  unfor 
tunately,  impossible  for  a  young  man  of  high  ideals  to  go 
about  saving  all  the  girls  he  meets.  Bob  said  to  this  brand 
in  the  burning: 

"You  sing  beauthifully,  mam'selle — excuse  Frensh,  but  I 
got  the  habit  over  there — over  there.  I've  heard  some  fine 
singeresses,  but  I'll  tell  the  worl'  you're  beaucoup  chanturze." 

"Thank  you,  thank  you,"  said  the  maiden,  uncomfort 
ably.  The  wine  came  and  the  waiter  poured  it  into  their 
glasses.  And  the  little  diva  saved  herself  from  a  proposal 
by  saying,  "Well,  here's  lookin'  at  you." 

If  she  had  murmured,  "Drink  to  me  only  with  thine  eyes," 
Bob  would  probably  have  offered  her  his  hand  and  his 
honorable  name,  but  the  inelegant  triteness  of  her  toast 
offended  him.  He  paid  for  the  wine  grimly  and  said: 

"Sorry  can't  stop  to  marry  you,  mam'selle,  but  'nother 
engagement,  if  you  know  what  I  mean." 

She  didn't,  but  she  said  she  did,  and~he  held  her  hand 
and  patted  it  in  a  fatherly  fashion.  He  would  have  kissed 
it,  but  he  had  found  that  when  he  bent  his  head  a  rush  of 
hot  fumes  threatened  to  make  a  volcano  of  his  skull. 

He  marched  out  earnestly,  taking  great  heed  of  his  steps, 
and  continued  his  search  for  fellowship.  It  was  only  for 
politeness  that  he  had  just  said  he  had  another  engagement. 
Yet  he  had  one,  though  he  did  not  know  it.  The  big  trouble 
he  was  looking  for  was  looking  for  him. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

BY  this  time  the  theaters  were  disgorging  their  multitudes 
into  Broadway  and  the  various  side-streets  near  Forty- 
second. 

The  sidewalks  were  like  a  log-jam;  the  roadways  were  as 
full  of  taxicabs,  limousines,  and  other  vehicles  as  infected 
blood-vessels  with  bacilli.  All  the  cars  were  hooting,  squawk 
ing,  darting.  Electric  call-boards  were  flashing  numbers. 
Boys  and  men  were  darting  this  way  and  that,  paging  limou 
sines  and  hunting  for  taxicabs.  The  traffic  police  performed 
their  maddening  tasks  like  gods  turning  chaos  into  system. 

Bob  was  caught  in  a  mass  of  humanity  and  upheld  and 
carried  along  in  the  molasses-flow.  The  forlornly  empty 
hotels  and  restaurants  filled  up  and  the  headwaiters  told  him 
they  were  fuller  than  they  were. 

The  headwaiters'  learned  eyes  recognized  that  Bob  was 
also  full.  He  was  pleasantly  turned  away  at  the  Knicker 
bocker,  Claridge's,  the  Astor,  the  Cafe"  de  Paris,  Churchill's, 
and  the  Palais  Royal. 

Chop-suey  signs  blinked  at  him  in  great  numbers,  but 
their  gaudy  banquet-rooms  were  all  up-stairs  and  they  did 
not  tempt  him. 

He  got  in  at  a  place  whose  title  was  as  Parisian  as  the 
cuisine  was  not.  The  tables  surrounded  a  quadrangle  where 
couples  spun  in  dances,  inspired  by  a  screaming  jazz  band 
made  of  gargled  saxophones,  ribald  clarinets,  nasal  cornets 
with  wooden  stoppers  in  their  bells,  and  a  satirical  trombone 
that  laughed  a  titanic  ha-ha-ha-ha ! 

The  dancers  looked  like  gunmen  and  shoplifters.  They 
were  probably  haberdashers  and  stenographers. 

At  the  table  next  to  Bob  a  very  tall  man,  with  eyes  that 
seemed  to  be  looking  through  a  bandage  of  mist,  listened 
absently  to  the  maunderings  of  a  besotted  little  woman  with 
a  crumpled  mouth  which  never  got  far  from  the  brim  of  her 

287 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

glass,  but  talked  across  it  incessantly.  She  was  reminiscent, 
apparently,  of  some  quondam  gallant  whom  she  had  jilted 
or  been  jilted  by. 

"That  fell'  did  noth'n'  but  talk  'bout  'mself  the  whole 
damtime,  'r  if  wasn'  talk'n'  'bout  'mself,  's  talk'n'  'bout's 
wife — she  mus'  'v'ad  mos'  awful  disp'sish  any  one  ev'rad. 
Use'  talk  'bout  's  chil'ren,  too.  My  Gawd!  I  know  that 
fam'ly  like  I  lived  with't  all  m'life.  Funny,  huh?  how 
people  '11  al's  talk  'bout  'selves,  never  'bout  you." 

The  deep  yearning  to  blab  was  a  passion  with  her,  but 
Bob  tired  of  her  doleful  reminiscences.  At  his  other  elbow 
all  was  merriment;  a  fat  man  was  enormously  amused  by 
the  cachinnations  of  his  fat  wife.  She  said  nothing  at  all ; 
just  bubbled  as  inarticulately  as  a  hot  Welsh  rabbit,  break 
ing  out  now  and  then  into  cadenzas  of  that  boozy  laughter 
that  carries  its  confession  to  long  distances. 

Her  husband,  who  was  less  notoriously  boozy,  kept  try 
ing  to  moderate  her  ecstasies:  "Not  s'  loud,  shweetie.  'Sh! 
'sh!  not  s'  loud.  Folksh  '11  think  y'had  t'mush  liq'r." 

Finally  he  persuaded  her  to  start  for  home  and  radiator- 
side.  The  narrow  aisle  seemed  to  be  a  blown  rope  in  the  wind 
and  she  an  inexperienced  tight-rope  walker. 

One  of  the  waiters  tried  to  steady  her  down  the  line,  but 
the  husband  smiled: 

"Never  mind.  She  sail  right.  I'm  goin'  to  shoot  her, 
anyway,  soon's  I  get  her  home." 

Bob  decided  that  he  was  in  the  wrong  place.  If  he  stayed 
here  much  longer  he  would  lose  his  respect  for  inebriety,  and 
he  had  a  passionate  longing  to  be  drunk.  He  paid  for  his 
highball  and  paid  a  hat-girl  for  his  hat,  saying,  with  genial 
irony: 

"This  ol'  hat  is  costing  me  so  much  to-night,  senorita, 
that  I  reckon  I'll  just  have  one  painted  on  my  head.  Save 
pile  money,  eh?  Well,  goo'  night." 

He  turned  back  down  Broadway  and  managed  to  get  into 
one  of  the  big  hotels  by  mingling  with  a  large  and  gorgeous 
party.  He  did  not  mean  to  force  himself  among  them,  but 
he  could  not  get  out,  once  in. 

He  was  about  to  float  into  the  dining-room  when  an  alert 
hat-boy  darted  after  him  and  seized  his  hat  from  him.  Bob 
seized  the  hat  again,  reciting,  solemnly: 

288 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

"Hat-boy,  spare  that  hat-at, 

Touch  not  a  shingle  bow-wow. 
In  youth  it  sheltered  me-me 
And  I'll  protect  it  now-ow.     Poetry." 

"Yes  sir,"  the  dazed  youth  responded,  but  still  clung  to 
the  brim.  Bob  was  patient. 

"Hat-boy,  this  hat-at  will  go  down  in  hist-hick-ory  with 
the  hat  my  fellow-stateshman,  Georz  Wash'n'on,  wore  at 
Wa'rloo,  and  helmet  of  Navarre,  and — and  soforth.  It  will 
cost  me  a  dime  to  leave  it  with  you?" 

"That's  as  you  like,  sir." 

"Then  I'll  pay  you  a  quarter  of  one  dollar  if  you  will 
graciously  permit  me  to  keep  it.  I  don't  want  to  cash  cold 
or  anything." 

"Yessir." 

Bob  ransomed  his  hat  and  moved  on;  the  boy  turned  to 
his  fellow-pickhat  and  muttered,  "There's  a  guy's  been 
fighting  the  booze  and  the  booze  win." 

The  head  headwaiter  checked  Bob's  advance.  ' '  The  tables 
are  all  taken,  sir." 

'I  see  half-dozen  as  empty  as  I  am,"  said  Bob. 
'But  they  are  reserved,  sir." 
' I  regret  to  say  I  don't  believe  you." 
'But—" 

'Get  out  of  my  way  or  I'll  breathe  on  you  and  ignite 
you." 

There  were  the  makings  of  a  lively  scene,  and  the  head- 
waiter  was  beckoning  his  forces  to  repel  the  boarder,  when 
April  ran  forward  impulsively. 

It  was  the  bravest  thing  she  had  ever  done.  In  her  country 
a  young  gentleman  in  his  cups  was  treated  with  Samaritan 
consideration,  and  it  seemed  less  terrible  to  her  to  go  to 
Bob's  rescue  than  to  sit  by  and  watch  him  thrown  out  like 
a  tramp. 

She  had  left  him  in  bitterness  that  afternoon,  her  pride, 
her  love  outraged  by  his  disloyalty.  She  had  broken  down 
so  completely  that  she  let  her  mother  and  Pansy  put  her 
to  bed.  She  had  cried  herself  out  by  six  o'clock,  and  a  fit 
of  restlessness  had  driven  her  frantic. 

Life  stretched  ahead  of  her  interminably  intolerable.   The 

289 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

oncoming  evening  was  more  than  she  could  face.  As  long 
as  she  had  had  Bob  for  a  prospective  future,  quiet  evenings 
at  home  had  been  easy  to  bear.  She  could  sit  and  knit 
sweaters,  or  stand  and  dabble  in  clay,  or  write  letters,  or 
just  muse.  But  now  that  she  was  suddenly  widowed  before 
she  was  wifed,  her  emotions  were  stampeded. 

Hugo  Clyde  had  called  up  and  invited  her  to  go  to  the 
theater  with  him,  and  her  mother  had  implored  her  to  ac 
cept,  but  she  had  not  yet  passed  the  crest  of  her  hysteria, 
and  she  had  refused. 

Then  Bob's  mother  telephoned  in  wild  excitement  that 
Bob's  marriage  had  been  postponed  vaguely.  April  waited 
in  a  frenzy  of  hope,  but  when  she  heard  nothing  more  she 
plummeted  still  deeper  into  gloom. 

Walter  Reece  had  telephoned  at  the  proper  moment  of 
reaction  and  she  had  accepted  his  invitation  in  a  spirit  of 
defiance  to  fate  and  to  Bob.  Walter  explained  that  Claudia's 
major-general  had  a  box  for  "East  Is  West,"  and  urged 
April  to  bring  her  mother  along  for  chaperon. 

This  took  the  edge  off  the  escapade,  but  April  had  in 
sisted  that  her  mother  should  drag  her  doubly  broken  heart 
out  of  solitude.  Poor  Mrs.  Summerlin's  East  was  West,  too; 
her  whole  compass  was  crumpled,  and  she  consented  to  be 
coerced. 

The  delightfully  impossible  plot  of  the  play  was  rendered 
plausible  by  the  art  of  Fay  Bainter  and  George  Nash  and 
Lester  Lonergan  and  the  rest,  and  the  theater  served  its 
magic  purpose  of  consoling  the  audience's  real  woes  by  the 
exploitation  of  the  characters'  imaginary  problems. 

After  the  theater,  General  Petherbridge  had  proposed 
supper,  and  led  his  flock  to  the  restaurant  where  Bob  was 
the  last  person  on  earth  April  expected  to  see. 

She  had  been  startled  by  the  sight  of  his  high  brow  as  he 
parleyed  with  the  hat-boy.  She  had  blushed  from  head  to 
foot  while  she  waited  for  Elate  Yarmy  to  come  forward. 

She  was  dazed  to  realize  that  Bob  was  alone,  and  curiosity 
rivaled  her  fantastic  joy.  Her  muscles  made  ready  to  spring 
forward  before  her  discretion  could  check  them. 

When  she  saw  that  Bob  was  drunk  regret  and  pity  brought 
swift  tears  to  her  eyes.  The  contemptuous  rebuff  he  re 
ceived  from  the  headwaiter  enraged  her.  That  foreigner, 

290 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

that  waiter  was  about  to  lay  hand  on  a  Taxter  from  Vir 
ginia!  Well,  not  while  a  Summerlin  from  Virginia  lived! 

April  was  a  gimper  by  instinct  and  ideal,  and  she  had 
acted  before  she  realized  what  she  was  doing. 

Bob  was  shocked  almost  sober  by  her  abrupt  apparition 
at  his  side  and  her  calm  rebuke  of  the  headwaiter. 

"  Mr.  Taxter  is  with  our  party  at  General  Petherbridge's 
table." 

The  headwaiter  bowed  in  homage  and  became  at  once 
the  eager  chamberlain.  He  hurried  forward,  snapping  his 
fingers  and  ordering  a  chair  placed  for  Mr.  Taxter. 

Bob  was  shocked  almost  sober,  but  his  brain  was  too 
saturated  to  throw  off  its  fumes,  and  the  fog  settled  down 
upon  him.  His  voice  was  so  resonant  and  his  joviality  so 
excessive  that  April  was  crimson  with  shame  as  she  guided 
his  uncertain  footsteps  to  the  table. 

"Who  zhoo  say's  in  your  party?"  Bob  demanded. 

"Mother  and  Claudia  and  Walter  and  General  Pether- 
bridge." 

This  ponderous  name  amused  Bob's  infantile  humor  im 
measurably  : 

"Not  old  Arshibald  Pether-pether-snidge?  Well,  as  I 
live  and  breeze!" 

Bob  laughed  so  uproariously  that  April  wished  she  had  let 
the  waiters  eject  him.  He  shook  hands  with  the  other 
guests  amiably  enough,  but  he  guffawed  in  the  face  of  the 
scarlet  old  warrior. 

It  has  been  wisely  noted  that  alcohol  is  never  a  stimulant, 
but  always  a  narcotic,  and  only  seems  to  stimulate  because 
it  drugs  in  some  persons  the  faculties  that  shackle  the  social 
instincts,  while  in  other  persons  it  drugs  the  faculties  that  give 
law  to  lawless  instincts.  When  the  policemen's  union  struck, 
in  Boston,  and  released  all  the  criminals  from  restraint 
that  was  a  parallel  to  alcoholism.  When  Chicago  lowered 
the  street-lamps  one  night  to  save  coal  during  the  coal 
strike,  and  crime  went  up  as  the  lights  went  down,  that  was 
another. 

Bob  was  a  living  sermon  now  for  Prohibition.  His  self- 
respect,  his  military  traditions  of  respect  for  superior  officers, 
his  ordinary  courtesy  to  women,  his  taste  for  inconspicuous- 
ness,  were  all  sent  disgracefully  to  sleep.  An  impish  inso- 

291 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

lence,  a  puerile  desire  to  break  things,  a  primeval  longing 
to  make  a  noise  and  show  off,  felt  the  slackening  of  the  leash 
and  broke  free. 

It  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  wittiest  thing  in  the  world  to 
call  General  Petherbridge  "Old  Arshie  Featherbed."  The 
poor  hero  of  the  Argonne  felt  like  a  stranded  whale.  His 
joviality  was  turned  to  confusion.  He  wanted  to  humor  the 
idiot  Bob  was,  and  he  tried  to  remind  himself  that  he  was  in 
a  non-military  republic  where  the  uniform  was  once  more  a 
handicap  rather  than  a  robe  of  authority,  but  he  was  furious. 
He  regretted  the  inhibitions  of  sobriety,  and  yearned  to  be 
drunk  long  enough  to  break  a  plate  over  Bob's  skull. 

Bob  was  in  a  poetic  vein,  and  was  moved  to  celebrate  the 
hapless  general  in  verse: 

"Arshie,  there's  KT  poem  about  you.  Thanks ;  I  will  recite 
it.  Cue  for  jazz  ban' — zing! — sizzle-sozzle — sizzle-sozzle — 
zing! — zang! — zing!  Humpty-Dumpty  sat  on  a  wall — on  a 
wall — on  a  wall.  Humpity-Dumpity  had  a  great  fall — great- 
a-fall — great-a-fall.  All  the  king  sorses  and  all  the  king 
smen  Couldn't  get  little  old  Zheneral  Arshibaldhead  Feather- 
bedhead  up  on  that  wall  again —  Why,  hello,  Mrs.  Shum'lin ! 
You're  lookin'  simply  lovely.  I  rise  to  propose  teas'  to—" 

April,  in  a  nausea,  tugged  at  his  coat  and  pleaded: 

"Sit  down  and  behave — if  you  can!" 

" '  If  I  can,' "  Bob  quoted,  haughtily.  "  Cer'nly  I  can.  I 
know  how  to  behave.  I'm  fed  up  on  etiquetty.  But  I'm 
s'perior  to  my  information.  But  if  you're  such  shtickler  for 
good  form,  don't  interrupt  speaker  about  to  propose  toas'  to 
lovely  lady — your  sainted  muzzer.  Arshie,  lend  me  your 
glash.  No?  Oh,  very  well!  Old  Stingy-stingy !  My  name's 
Little  Bobby-buy-the-booze.  Waiter!  What  ho,  without 
there!  Where's  about  forty  waiters?  Varlet,  come  hither! 
I  would  have  some  wine — ho!" 

April  rose  hastily.  "I  think  I'll  go  home." 

"Let's,"  said  Bob. 

She  dropped  into  her  chair.     "  I  think  I'll  stay." 

"  Let's,"  said  Bob.  He  put  his  arm  about  the  waiter's  neck 
for  support,  and  spoke  with  royal  kindliness:  "Minion — for 
whom  I  have  greates*  affection — let  beakers  be  brought  and 
eke  wassail.  Do  you  know  what  wassail  is  ?" 

"No  sir!" 

292 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

"Correct.  Neither  do  I.  Let's  shift  to  some  grand  old 
bourbon  whissikey — what?" 

"Yessir." 

"Also  a  few  rickety  gins  and — " 

April  shook  her  head  at  the  waiter  and  tried  prayer  on  Bob : 

"I  implore  you,  dear,  to  remember  where  you  are." 

Bob's  godhead  was  not  listening  to  prayers.  "Don't  try 
to  reform  me  in  public,  April.  I  consis'ntly  refuse  to  be 
reformed  in  public  places."  He  turned  to  Walter  Reece: 

"Wal'r,  dear  old  Walrush,  what  you  having?" 

"Thanks,  Bob;  I'm  on  the  water-wagon." 

"Is  'at  so?  Dear,  dear!  Of  all  forms  locomotion,  I  leas' 
admire  water-mobile."  Then  he  turned  to  the  waiter,  "Do 
I  get  my  order  or  do  I  not?" 

"No!"  said  April,  trying  autocracy.  "Sit  down  at  once. 
I  insist!  Your  voice  is  attracting  attention." 

"You  insist!  ha-ha!  also  ho-ho!  Well,  little  insister,  in  a 
lowered  tone  permit  me  to  say  you  can't  run  me.  At  least 
not  till  after  the  wedding-bells  have  tolled  their  doleful  toll. 
Ping-pong-pong-pong !" 

April's  patience  was  gone.  "Those  wedding-bells  will 
never  toll  for  us!" 

Bob  had  entirely  forgotten  Kate's  existence.  He  was  back 
in  the  glorious  days  of  being  engaged  to  and  disengaged  from 
April: 

"You  cast  me  off,  do  you?  Very  well;  then  I  will  cele 
brate  my  in'pen'ence  by  magnificent  spree.  Do  I  get  my 
liquor  or  do  I  tear  this  gilded  palace  of  shin  to  shreds? 
Wine-ho!  I  repeat." 

The  headwaiter  came  up  in  considerable  distress. 

"I'm  sorry,  sir,  but  the  wine-cellar  is  closed,  sir." 

This  infuriated  Bob.  "Stuff  and  nonsense!  Don't  trifle 
with  me.  I  won't  have  it !  Bring  me  a  drink — mush  drink — 
instanter!" 

"No  more  drinks  are  to  be  had,  sir.     I'm  sorry,  sir." 

At  this  moment  a  waiter  came  in  from  another  room, 
trundling  a  perambulator  full  of  bottles  of  cocktail  ingredi 
ents  and  other  palatable  venoms.  Before  he  could  be  warned 
away  Bob  caught  sight  of  him  and  beckoned  him : 

"Ah,  here  comes  my  friend.  Little  lad  with  the  fire 
water-wagon.  You  may  approach." 

293 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

The  headwaiter  gesticulated.  April  rose  in  terror.  Others 
at  other  tables  rose  in  fascinated  expectancy. 

The  liquor-charioteer  paused,  wheeled,  and  tried  to  escape. 
Bob  darted  after  him,  caught  him,  and,  seizing  a  bottle  and  a 
glass,  prepared  to  pour  oil  on  his  inner  fires. 

But  the  militia  of  the  restaurant  had  been  trained  for  this 
sort  of  emergency.  It  enlivened  the  dull  rounds  of  their  toil, 
and  they  gathered  with  a  zest. 

The  traitorous  alcohol  that  made  Bob  a  son  of  battle  did 
not  inspire  him  in  the  field,  but  rendered  him  inaccurate  of 
aim  and  infirm  of  strategy.  He  potted  a  nose  or  two,  and 
there  was  some  breakage  of  china  and  glass  as  he  went  out, 
clutching  at  table-cloths,  swiping  at  faces  that  were  not  there 
when  his  fist  arrived,  and  threatening  slaughter  that  he  could 
not  achieve. 

April's  heart  would  have  ached  with  sympathy  for  him,  and 
she  would  have  been  tempted  to  go  to  his  rescue  if  he  had  not 
made  so  deplorable  an  exhibition  of  himself  in  her  duel  with 
his  inebriated  soul. 

She  had  had  a  hard  day  of  it  with  Bob,  and  he  had  trampled 
her  pride  in  the  afternoon  as  recklessly  as  in  the  evening.  She 
had  appealed  in  vain  both  to  Bob  sober  and  to  Bob  drunk. 

She  washed  her  hands  of  him  and  turned  her  back  on  the 
appalling  indignity  of  his  exit. 

The  waiters  marched  him  to  the  door  and  out  into  the 
street,  and  flung  him  to  the  public  as  if  he  were  garbage. 
He  made  an  effort  or  two  to  force  his  way  back,  but  only 
to  be  disjected  again. 

The  management  had  no  desire  to  appear  in  the  police 
court  and  did  not  call  for  the  police.  And  there  chanced  to 
be  no  policeman  at  hand. 

If  there  had  been,  Bob  would  have  triecf  conclusions  with 
him  and  all  his  cohorts.  He  was  in  an  Ajax  mood,  but  he 
could  not  evoke  any  lightning. 

Disappointed  at  every  turn,  he  began  to  weep  bitterly. 
He  found  a  congenial  listener,  who  helped  to  support  him 
into  a  side-street  where  there  were  few  passers-by  to  stare. 

The  stranger  was  a  Samaritan  for  sympathy,  but  he 
charged  for  his  services.  He  found  Bob's  wallet  and  ap 
propriated  it.  Then  he  left  Bob  on  the  steps  of  a  high- 
stooped,  untenanted  house  and  went  his  way. 

294 


HONOR  GOES  OUT 

If  Bob  had  not  previously  stuffed  a  little  money  into  a 
trousers-pocket  he  would  have  been  left  entirely  without 
funds  for  prosecuting  his  search  for  real  excitement. 

For  the  moment  he  sat  and  wept  like  another  Alexander 
because  he  could  find  no  worlds  to  conquer. 

This  much-advertised  Babylon  was  as  dismally  virtuous 
as  the  Sahara  Desert. 

20 


Book   V 
LOVE   GOES   OUT 


CHAPTER  I 

A  MORE  unheroic  place,  mood,  and  posture  for  a  hero  than 
Bob  Taxter's  would  be  hard  to  imagine.  An  author 
often  has  an  experience  common  to  a  marrier:  the  chosen 
hero  or  heroine  turns  out  to  be  full  of  unsuspected  and  in 
eradicable  faults,  discovered  all  too  late.  Many  authors,  like 
many  matrimonial  victims,  thereupon  devote  themselves  to 
concealing  from  the  public  the  terrible  truth ;  they  lie  about, 
gloss  over,  and  suppress  everything  that  is  not  pretty. 
Like  photographers,  they  retouch  every  blemish  and  leave 
only  a  pale  blur. 

But  Bob  must  not  be  disguised.  Such  dishonesty  may 
safely  be  left  to  the  writers  of  moral  and  respectable  fiction. 

Still,  it  is  increasingly  apparent  that  it  would  have  been 
advisable  to  select  a  higher  type  of  American  soldier  for  this 
biography.  There  is  Sergeant  Yorke,  for  instance,  the 
mountaineer  who  went  to  war  unwillingly,  killed  and  capt 
ured  more  prisoners  than  any  other  Yank,  came  home 
loaded  with  medals,  went  back  to  his  humble  peaks,  married 
the  girl  he  had  left  behind,  and  set  out  on  a  lecture  tour, 
with  a  side  ambition  to  destroy  the  vice  of  cigarettes  and 
rescue  America  from  the  tobacco  demon.  There  is  Lieutenant 
Maynard,  the  young  preacher,  a  premature  angel  who  flew 
from  New  York  to  California  and  back  with  celestial  speed, 
and  was  terrified  by  nothing  except  the  immodest  costumes 
of  New  York  women  and  the  fierce  response  to  his  state 
ments  that  American  aviators  were  addicted  to  liquor. 

A  million  better  heroes  than  Bob  might  have  been  found 
among  the  soldiers  and  sailors  and  marines  who  went  into 
the  war  from  the  noblest  motives,  came  out  resanctified,  and 
took  up  earnest  missions  for  the  good  of  mankind. 

Their  achievements  were  bruited  abroad  in  tall  head-lines, 
and  they  deserved  their  fame.  Yes,  it  was  a  grave  error  to 
select  a  Bob  Taxter  for  record.  It  is  hard  to  find  a  single  bit 
of  hero-plasm  in  him.  He  went  into  the  air  because  he  loved 

299 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

adventure.  He  went  to  the  war,  not  because  he  loved  hu 
manity,  but  because  he  hated  Germany,  and  he  hated  Ger 
many  mainly  because  his  country  had  declared  war  on 
Germany. 

He  fought  without  piety  or  prayer.  He  fought  like  a  fiend, 
cursing  and  blaspheming.  He  wept  because  the  war  died 
under  him  before  he  had  satisfied  his  thirst  for  gore.  He  got 
out  of  the  uniform  as  quickly  as  he  could,  and  proceeded  to 
flirt  with  another  girl  while  he  quarreled  with  his  fiance'e. 

When  he  found  himself  unexpectedly  possessed  of  ten  thou 
sand  dollars,  did  he  rejoice  at  the  opportunity  to  devote  his 
future  to  the  betterment  of  the  poor,  or  the  foundation  of  a 
chair  of  learning,  or  social  welfare?  Not  in  the  slightest. 
It  never  occurred  to  him  to  give  it  away  magnanimously. 
He  revealed  a  disgusting  ambition  to  get  rich  quick.  He 
showed  deplorable  traits  of  envy  and  jealousy,  and  tried  to 
get  richer  quicker  than  his  betrothed. 

Even  in  his  investment  he  let  himself  be  duped,  and 
would  have  been  swindled  out  of  his  money  by  a  pair  of 
crooks  if  it  had  not  been  stolen  from  him  by  an  old,  doddering 
Senegambian. 

He  let  his  chivalry  make  a  fool  of  him,  and  would  have 
let  it  drag  him  to  the  altar  with  a  woman  he  did  not  love. 
And  again  he  was  saved  from  disaster  only  by  the  desperate 
inspirations  of  a  stupid  ex-slave. 

Then,  did  he  reform  like  the  Prodigal,  and  turn  homeward 
repentant?  He  did  not!  He  avoided  his  only  living  parent, 
and  went  out  with  no  finer  ambition  than  a  lust  for  liquor  and 
general  rampage.  Even  here  a  pack  of  waiters  tore  him  from 
his  apogee  and  cast  him  into  outer  darkness. 

And  now  he  slumped  on  the  old  foot-bitten  steps  of  a  house 
with  six  "  To  Let ' '  signs  on  it,  and  he  wept — wept  with  remorse 
because  he  had  debased  his  aristocracy,  disgraced  his  breeding 
and  his  opportunities,  and  belittled  the  proud  name  he  bore? 
Not  by  a  jugful — not  by  a  tear-jugful !  He  wept  because  he 
could  not  get  as  drunk  as  he  wanted  to,  and  nobody  would 
fight  him. 

When  he  arose  at  length,  with  a  high  resolve,  was  it  to  lead 
a  better  life?  It  was  not.  The  thing  that  straightened  his 
floppy  legs  and  lifted  his  swimming  head  was  a  sudden  happy 
thought  that  perhaps  he  could  find  a  policeman  who  would 

300 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

give  him  a  good  battle.  His  ambition  now  was  to  put  out 
one  of  New  York's  guardians  of  the  peace,  take  his  club  and 
cap  away,  and  flaunt  them  himself. 

A  fine  flower  of  generations  of  freedom,  compulsory  educa 
tion,  equality,  and  opportunity  in  the  greatest  country  on 
earth,  by  its  own  admission! 

The  misguided  historian  and  the  misled  reader  must  do 
all  the  repenting  for  wasting  all  this  time,  and  all  this  space 
that  might  have  been  occupied  by  beautiful  deeds  of  wisdom 
and  grandeur,  or  by  the  fiction  of  uplift  that  shows  how  a 
virtuous  hero  may  overcome  all  the  villainies  of  the  villainous 
if  he  but  keep  his  heart  pure  and  his  head  clear  of  stimulant 
or  sedative  fumes. 

The  only  thing  to  do  in  the  premises  is  to  get  this  miserable 
fellow  out  of  his  present  predicament  as  rapidly  and  decently 
as  possible,  then  leave  him  to  muddle  through  the  rest  of  his 
erratic  career  without  further  record. 

This  task  is  fortunately  rendered  simple  by  the  fact  that 
Bob  found,  to  his  regret  (in  which  the  gentle  reader  will  not 
share,  of  course),  that  New  York  was  a  damnably  uninterest 
ing  sink  of  propriety  after  midnight — a  welter  of  sleepy 
burghers,  somber  dance-halls,  and  an  endless  monotony  of 
dark  streets. 

Furthermore,  in  spite  of  many  travelers'  tales  to  the  con 
trary,  the  New  York  policeman  is  the  politest,  peacefulest 
philanthropist  on  earth.  He  spends  his  time  saving  myopic 
imbeciles  from  walking  into  or  driving  into  destruction ;  he  is 
always  courteous  when  fairly  bespoken,  and  his  patience  with 
drunkards  would  make  Job  throw  up  his  job. 

Bob  wasted  a  good  deal  of  time  looking  for  a  policeman. 
There  are  only  ten  thousand  of  them  required  to  keep  the 
traffic  of  New  York's  five  or  six  million  wanderers  in  order, 
and  at  this  hour  most  of  them  were  in  bed  or  playing  authors 
or  parcheesi  in  the  back  rooms  of  the  station-houses. 

While  he  looked  for  a  policeman  Bob  paused  to  inspect 
several  restaurants.  Their  stodgy  respectability  disheart 
ened  him,  and  he  would  not  have  lingered  even  if  he  had  been 
urged  to,  which  he  was  emphatically  not. 

Three  or  four  places  offered  dances,  cabarets,  and  revues  of 
splendor,  and  he  tried  to  force  his  way  into  Healy's  "Golden 
Glades,"  but  was  rebuffed  at  the  door. 

301 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

A  cabman  outside  offered  to  take  him  to  the  glories  of 
Pabst's,  in  Harlem.  It  was  a  long  way  to  12  5th  Street, 
and,  once  there,  Bob  was  informed  that  only  gentlemen  with 
ladies  and  ladies  with  gentlemen  were  admitted  to  the 
ballroom. 

By  the  time  he  had  been  jolted  back  down- town  his 
money  was  almost  gone,  and  his  time  was  all  gone.  It  was 
one  o'clock,  the  very  closing  hour  when  waiters  yawn  and 
bakeries  give  up  their  bread. 

Bob  was  almost  frantic  as  he  saw  the  front  doors  of  cafe's 
and  cabarets  being  folded  together  and  locked  on  the  heels  of 
evicted  lingerers.  Here  and  there  a  few  were  permitted  to 
finish  their  cheese  and  crackers  behind  drawn  curtains. 
But  the  town  was  on  its  way  up-stairs. 

One  famous  all-night  haven  occurred  to  Bob  as  a  last 
resort.  He  hastened  to  Jack's  on  Sixth  Avenue.  Even 
here  he  found  the  doors  bolted!  He  tapped  frantically  on 
the  glass,  but  a  waiter  within  shook  a  doleful  head  and 
yawned.  Everybody  had  the  gapes  but  Bob. 

He  clung  like  the  Peri  at  the  gate  of  Paradise,  but  the  gate 
would  not  yield  to  his  prayers.  As  he  stumbled  away  he  had 
the  companionship  in  misery  of  two  taxicab-loads  of  thirsty 
men,  who  rolled  up  and  rolled  out  too  late. 

They  mingled  their  groans  with  Bob's,  but  their  lamenta 
tions  were  drowned  by  the  fremebund  passage  of  an  elevated 
train  thundering  overhead  with  the  uproar  of  a  polyphlces- 
bcean  billow.  That  Juggernaut  of  respectability  was  carry 
ing  the  final  roisterers  back  to  the  pillows  and  penates  of  all 
Up-town. 

An  unutterable  loneliness  overwhelmed  poor  Bob.  He 
felt  as  taunted  as  Coleridge's  wretches.  They  had  "water, 
water  everywhere,  nor  any  drop  to  drink";  and  Bob  had 
people,  people  everywhere,  and  nary  place  to  drink .  Bob  was 
as  epically  lonely  as  the  young  hero  of  Charles  Hanson 
Towne's  beautiful  poem,  "Manhattan." 

New  York  had  no  dark  life  then.  It  was  as  dull  in  the 
afternoon  of  night  as  London  had  been  for  decades,  and  Paris 
since  the  war.  Paris  had  not  yet  reverted  to  its  old  gaiety. 
Its  somnambulant  waiters  had  got  into  the  habit  of  going 
home  at  one  o'clock,  and  they  were  reluctant  to  resume  the 
ancient  ways. 

302 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

The  one-o'clock  closing  law  of  war-time  still  clamped  the 
lid  on  New  York,  and  would  long  prevail.  Wherever  Bob 
went,  prowling  for  a  refuge  from  the  dark  streets,  he  found 
the  cafe's  darker  still. 

It  was  not  that  all  New  York  was  innocently  abed.  There 
were  carousals  in  private  resorts,  gambling  in  secluded  spots, 
dances  going  full  tilt  in  many  a  gleaming  ballroom  and  many 
a  shabby  hall.  Vice  was  industrious  here  and  there,  but 
generally  asleep.  Young  girls  of  all  ages  were  still  reading 
themselves  awake  with  novels.  Students  a  few  were  poring 
over  lessons,  and  capitalists  were  insomniac  over  the  prob 
lems  of  making  the  world  safe  for  the  labor  unions. 

But  these  places  were  not  for  strangers,  and  even  the  haunts 
of  vice,  especially  the  haunts  of  vice,  were  cautious  against 
unknown  visitors. 

Like  another  wandering  Jew,  Bob's  dreary  pilgrimage  was 
all  in  vain.  Dairy  lunch-rooms  were  open  in  plenty,  and 
chop-suey  joints,  grotesque  and  tawdry,  offered  him  innumer 
able  Chinese  distortions  of  chicken  and  rice,  also  bamboo 
shoots  and  quaint  rubberoid  delicacies.  But  Bob  did  not 
want  tea.  \ 

He  asked  many  a  fellow-exile  upon  the  dreary  streets  for 
counsel,  and  one  and  all  told  him  to  be  glad  he  was  as  full 
as  he  was,  and  not  ask  too  much.  He  quizzed  taxicab  men 
and  even  the  dolorous  drivers  of  horses,  but  they  shook  their 
headsf  and  their  glum  refrain  was:  "N'  Yawk's  dead.  The 
little  old  boig  ain't  what  she  used  to  was." 

Bob  would  not  give  up  hope,  and  he  covered  a  vast  amount 
of  territory,  with  frequent  pauses  to  rest  his  feet  and  squeeze 
his  skull  together. 

By  three  o'clock  he  was  desperate  enough  for  human  so 
ciety  and  refreshment,  even  solid,  to  enter  one  of  the  constel 
lation  of  Quids'  dairy  lunch-rooms — the  one  in  Columbus 
Circle. 

Here,  to  his  amazement,  he  found  a  strange  and  unbe 
lievable  assemblage  of  gentlemen  and  ladies  in  full  evening 
dress,  mingled  with  the  usual  small  fry  that  eat  at  the  darkest 
hour  before  the  dawn. 

It  had  come  to  be  a  fashion,  even  before  it  became  a  neces 
sity,  for  those  who  had  danced  themselves  hungry  in  the 
early  morning  to  flock  to  the  dairy  lunch-rooms  for  food. 

303 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

The  first  adventurers  discovered  to  their  surprise  that 
these  places  offered  entertainment  for  the  stomach  no  less 
delicious  than  the  ancient  products  of  the  foreign  cuisiniers. 
They  found  here  no  squabs  and  pate's,  salads  and  me'ringues, 
nor  even  any  lobsters  and  terrapin,  crab-meats  and  clams. 

But  they  found  national  inventions  of  equal  toothsome- 
ness  and  equally  interesting  as  sporty  hazards  for  the 
digestion. 

Here  a  specialite  de  la  maison  was  the  last  word  in  the  ex 
quisite  :  the  fried-egg  sandwich,  which  would  be  as  poetical  as 
omelette  aux  fines  herbes  or  any  of  the  thousand  forms  of 
oval  disguise,  if  only  a  foreign  poet  would  rave  over  its 
wealth  of  gold  in  a  white-satin  envelop  laid  between  two 
sheets  of  bread,  with  the  added  benison  of  a  great  circle  of 
Bermuda  onion,  white  as  a  watch-dial  and  sweet  as  candy. 

The  cordon  bleu  of  this  tavern  prided  himself  on  certain 
marshmallowy  crumpets  of  bulging  creaminess  between  blis 
tered  surfaces  made  wonderfully  savory  with  butter  plunged 
into  their  snowy  insides.  Buttercakes  are  less  satisfactory 
after  they  have  been  plunged  into  one's  own  insides,  and 
hence  their  popular  or  unpopular  name  is  "sinkers."  Fair, 
but  false,  they  melt  like  edible  evanescence  on  the  tongue, 
but  lie  like  paper-weights  on  the  stomach — "wax  to  receive, 
but  marble  to  retain." 

Here  one  could  suit  his  whim  by  choosing  between  two 
famous  dishes,  "Ham  and  Boston,"  or  "Ham  and  New 
York" — the  word  "beans"  being  always  understood.  This 
plat  de  nuit  consists  of  a  slice  of  ham  (or,  if  one  prefer,  of  beef 
or  corned  beef)  supporting  a  load  of  beans,  looking  like 
clusters  of  brown  grapes  if  cooked  in  the  individualistic  style 
known  as  "Boston,"  or  looking  like  a  porridge  if  cooked 
"New  York." 

The  dairy  lunch  leans  heavily,  of  course,  on  pies — on  all 
the  pies  in  season — and  the  canned  seasons  are  perennial. 

But  best  of  all  were  the  cakes — those  buckwheat  cakes  of 
which  Matthew  Arnold,  being  coerced  to  nibble  during  his 
American  lecture  tour,  said  in  his  most  Athenian  manner  to 
his  wife,  "Try  them,  my  d'yah;  they're  not  hahf  so  nahsty 
as  they  look." 

For  this  the  poet  merited  the  rebuke  that  Doctor  Johnson 
(perhaps)  administered  to  one  who  spoke  slightingly  of  the 

304 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

Venus  de'  Medici,  "That  remark,  sir,  is  not  a  criticism;  it 
is  a  confession."  It  was  almost  a  sacrilege. 

Here,  as  in  all  good  lunch-rooms,  at  the  windows  stood  the 
white-capped  buckwheat  priests  in  their  white  aprons,  before 
their  black,  iron  altars,  with  the  vestal  gas-fires  that  never 
go  out.  At  the  call  of  those/musical  words,  "Brown  the 
bucks,  one,"  a  priest  poured  on  the  surface  the  batter  from 
the  pitcher,  in  a  coil  that  became  in  time  a  disk  of  ambrosia, 
creaming  and  browning  and  freckling  and  rising  with  a  yeastly 
yearning.  Very  like  to  love  are  buckwheat  cakes.  For  there 
is  nothing  more  blissful  hot,  and  nothing  more  loathsome 
cold,  than  a  buckwheat  cake,  unless  it  be  love. 

It  was  not  strange  that  the  beauty  and  the  chivalry  of 
New  York  should  in  time  discover  that  they  were  allowing 
the  poor  to  monopolize  ecstasies  that  were  far  too  good  for 
them.  Love  they  could  not  deny  the  poor,  but  the  rich  had 
too  long  denied  themselves  midnight  cakes  and  syrup,  with 
coffee  and  scalded  milk  drawn  from  nickel-plated  caldrons 
like  silver  turrets. 

Bob  stared  in  unbelief  at  the  sight  of  all  these  swells 
putting  away  eggs  and  beans  and  pies  and  cakes,  and  at  the 
belles  who  threw  back  their  gorgeous  cloaks  and  bent  for 
ward  in  silken  opulence  to  feast  on  what  was  once  considered 
grub  for  the  poor  and  the  hasty.  One  dreamy-eyed  sultana 
lifted  in  her  jeweled  finders  a  tiny  pewter  ewer  of  maple 
syrup,  and  trickled  it  over  the  butter-gilded  buckwheats 
as  if  she  were  eking  out  a  very  precious  ointment. 

The  place  was  murmurous  with  swagger  merriment  that 
had  somehow  managed  (as  the  well-dressed  always  do)  to 
give  a  look  of  dissipation  to  the  most  innocent  activities. 

Bob  saw  one  indubitable  wastrel  eating  a  bowl  of  graham 
crackers  and  milk  with  a  manner  positively  Trimalchian. 

Bob  stared  and  turned  away.  The  thought  of  syrup  and 
cakes  wrung  his  parched  tongue  to  a  revulsion.  Maple 
syrup  was  to  him  what  water  is  to  a  mad  dog.  With  a  howl 
of  saccharophobia  Bob  turned  and  fled  back  into  the  night. 

And  now  at  last  he  found  a  policeman  to  challenge.  He 
was  not  so  young  and  fit  as  Bob  would  have  liked,  but  he 
had  a  club  and  a  cap  that  Bob  decided  to  acquire  as  trophies 
of  the  most  unsatisfactory  day  and  night  of  his  existence. 

305 


CHAPTER  II 

OFFICER  DERMOT  TWOMEY  was  as  peaceable  a  man 
as  ever  came  out  of  Ballinasloe,  that  two-county  town 
half  Galway  and  half  Roscommon.  He  had  been  trained  to 
compromise  as  a  boy  there  where  neither  county  faction 
could  move  the  town  to  its  side  of  the  line. 

In  all  the  dissensions  that  had  torn  the  Irish  heart  for  the 
last  five  years,  and  were  rending  it  now,  Twomey  quarreled 
with  nobody,  not  with  those  who  upheld  President  De 
Valera  of  the  Irish  Republic,  nor  with  those  who  were  for 
Plunkett's  plan;  not  even  with  those  who  approved  of  the 
incorrigible  Carson.  Twomey  was  a  much-needed  sort  of 
Irishman. 

He  had  spent  a  long  evening  on  post  in  the  theater  district, 
his  relief  had  been  delayed,  and  he  had  lingered  at  the  station- 
house  making  out  his  reports,  till  now,  at  three  o'clock,  he 
was  on  his  way  home  to  his  wife  and  the  littlest  two  of  his 
six  children,  who  knew  so  well  how  well  he  admired  them 
asleep  that  they  always  pretended  to  be  asleep  when  he 
came  home,  no  matter  how  much  noise  he  made. 

The  policeman's  heart  was  full  of  song  and  philanthropy. 
His  cap  was  pushed  back  to  let  the  moonlit  breeze  sweep  his 
brow,  and  he  was  humming  something  in  Gaelic  as  he  tossed 
his  short  club  in  and  out  of  his  hand  on  a  loose  wrist-knot. 

He  was  taking  the  long  cut  home  because  he  liked  Colum 
bus  Circle-;— a  fine  open  space  with  no  very  tall  buildings  to 
cramp  a  big  sky  like  a  broad  blue  bosom  with  silver  buttons 
on  it  and  the  moon  for  a  badge. 

The  Circle  was  rarely  dead  at  any  hour  of  day  or  night.  At 
three  o'clock  the  morning  papers  were  already  there  in  big 
stacks,  with  gossipy  old  men  and  women  fussing  over  them, 
and  a  man  could  have  a  look  at  to-morrow's  sensation  before 
going  to  bed  to-night. 

Then  there  was  usually  an  Irish  county  dance  or  two  going 

306 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

on  in  Fifty-ninth  Street,  and  early  stragglers  bound  home  and 
willing  to  stop  and  have  a  kindly  fight  over  what  Ireland 
was  coming  to. 

In  any  case,  the  Circle  itself  was  always  an  eyeful.  Cen 
tral  Park  came  up  to  one  side  of  it,  fetching  forests  and  coun 
try  lanes  right  into  the  city.  There  was  the  big  monument 
to  the  men  who  were  lost  in  the  Maine,  with  a  fine  lot  of  gold 
figures  at  the  top  of  it. 

And  there  was  that  old  Columbus,  perched  aloft  on  his 
rostral  column  in  the  center  of  the  street-car  tracks,  always 
standing  there  in  an  attitude  of  astonishment  at  what  his 
little  hunt  for  India  had  brought  upon  this  dark  continent 
that  barred  his  way. 

Twomey  used  to  draw  a  lesson  from  it  to  the  effect  that  a 
man  never  knows  what  he's  starting  when  he  starts  something 
— especially  a  Dago. 

Upon  his  philosophical  meditation  Bob  Taxter  intruded 
with  the  blatant  cynicism  of  a  Diogenes. 

Twomey's  practised  eye  recognized  from  Bob's  legs  that 
his  burden  was  almost  more  than  he  could  bear.  And 
Twomey's  heart  softened  a  little  in  advance.  He  felt  the 
sorrier  for  Bob  because  the  lad  was  plainly  driven  to  an  ugly 
climax  and  would  probably  belch  up  some  sour  language. 
But  Twomey  was  as  patient  with  seasick  men  on  land  as  a 
steward  on  a  Channel  steamer  with  the  victims  of  a  rough 
crossing.  And  what  Irishman  would  take  umbrage  at  a 
mere  swipe  with  a  fist  ?  A  man  doesn't  have  to  hold  his  head 
still.  He  has  a  neck,  hasn't  he? 

The  final  degree  of  Bob's  initiation  into  the  Arcadian 
simplicity  of  New  York  night  life  was  an  encounter  with  a 
non-inflammable  policeman. 

Bob's  first  words  betrayed  the  fact  that  he  had  no  special 
grudge  against  Twomey,  but  merely  an  academic  revolt 
against  coppers  in  general,  and  against  the  fact  that  he  could 
not  get  drunk !  He  was  so  lit  up  that  he  was  blinded  by  his 
own  effulgence. 

Twomey  only  laughed  when  Bob  tried  to  insult  him,  re 
vealing  none  of  that  inspired  alcohol  wit  so  much  advertised 
and  so  rarely  met. 

Bob  was  simply  maudlin. 

"Say! — you!  Zhes,  I  mean  zhoo!  You  old  sparrow-cop.' 

307 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

You  goo'-f'r-notii'n  gum-shoe  constabule  in  the  jayest  town 
on  earfthp.  I'm  goin'  lick  'ell  out  of  you  an'  take  your 
club  away  an'  everything." 

"That's  a  domd  good  idea,"  said  Twomey.  " I'm  off  duty 
annyhow,  so  you're  hairtily  welkim." 

He  did  not  quite  give  Bob  the  club,  but  he  gave  him  sup 
port,  and  he  held  Bob's  lapel  crosswise  in  such  a  friendly 
clasp  that  somehow  Bob  could  not  quite  reach  that  smiling 
face  with  his  fists. 

"Would  zhoo  like  know  what  I  think  this  damtown?"  Bob 
demanded. 

"I'm  achin'  to  hear,"  said  Twomey.  And  Bob  got  rid  of 
a  lot  of  very  rancid  language  that  fascinated  such  men  and 
women  as  were  to  be  found  in  Columbus  Circle  at  that  hour, 
and  were  amused  at  drunkards  as  people  used  to  be  amused 
by  the  permanently  insane. 

Twomey  sighed  at  some  of  Bob's  abuse.  It  was  very 
ancient,  and  not  at  all  brilliant.  A  policeman  is  a  sort  of 
trained  nurse  to  people  sick  of  various  disorders,  from  absent- 
mindedness  to  absent-consciencedness,  and  Twomey  had 
heard  it  all  before,  from  out-of-town  people  and  in-town 
people.  They  seemed  to  feel  that  it  did  them  some  good  to 
denounce  that  great  shapeless  nebula  called  New  York — as 
if  New  York  were  something  or  somebody  that  could  accept 
rebuke  or  praise. 

When  Bob  had  exhausted  his  vocabulary  New  York  felt 
just  about  the  same  and  Bob  was  a  little  easier.  But  he 
was  no  nearer  a  fight,  and  Twomey  still  wore  his  cap,  his 
club,  and  that  abominable  smile.  Finally  Bob  saw  a  great 
light.  He  knew  how  to  enrage  this  pacifist. 

"You  'r'Irish,  I  reckon,"  he  snarled.  Twomey  nodded,  a 
little  uncomfortably.  He  hoped  the  boy  would  not  lay  vio 
lent  hands  on  the  ark  of  his  patriotism  and  pierce  through  to 
certain  hidden  springs  of  wrath  that  might  spout  in  spite  of 
Twomey's  self-control.  Bob  sneered: 

"What  side  were  you  on  in  this  swar,  huh ?  Whasside  you 
on  in  this  swar?" 

"On  this  side,"  Twomey  sighed. 

"Whaddi  tell  you?"  Bob  cried.  "You  didn'  go  over. 
You're  a  dam'  pro-Gennanirishman,  and  I  knew  it  firs'stime 
I  saw  you." 

308 


"I'M   COIN*   TAKE   YOUR   CLUB   AWAY   AN'   EVERYTHING* 


"THAT'S  A  DOMD  GOOD  IDEA,"  SAID  OFFICER  TWOMEY 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"And  what  side  were  you  ahn?"  said  Twomey,  quietly. 

"I  's  on  oth'  side  water  shavin'  the  worl'  for  democ'shy. 
I  got  liT  ol'  war-crossh  'n'  ev'thing." 

"And  were  you  now,  and  did  you?"  said  Twomey.  "It 
may  be  might  be  you  met  one  or  the  both  of  my  boys  there. 
There  was  Sairgeant  Francis  X.  Twomey  of  Coompany  Ah, 
and  Corpor'l  John  Pether  Twomey  of  Coompany  Haitch. 
You  saw  them,  belike?" 

"What  rezhmen'  of  what  d'vision?"  Bob  demanded,  a 
little  more  truculently,  to  hide  his  embarrassment. 

"And  what  rigiment  would  it  be  but  the  Hoonderd  an' 
Sixty-fi'th  Rainbows?" 

"You  don'  shoshay — shay  sho!" 

Bob  saluted  and  drew  himself  up  so  sharply  that  he  would 
have  collapsed  like  a  stack  of  arms  if  Twomey  had  not  held 
him.  Then  he  grew  cynical  again : 

"You  never  had  any  sons  over  there  at  all — not  a  dam' 
tall." 

"Two  I  had,"  said  Twomey.  "Wan  of  them  is  only 
partly  home;  wan  of  them  is  stayin'  over  thayre,"  said 
Twomey,  his  eyes  askance,  and  little  muscles  in  his  cheek 
showing  that  he  had  set  his  jaws  on  an  old  cud  of  grief. 

Suddenly  Bob  was  weeping  the  mobile  tears  of  the  drunk. 
He  flung  his  arm  about  the  father's  neck  and  tried  to  kiss 
him,  but  jiu-jitsu  saved  the  officer  again.  Being  killed  by 
criminals  and  kissed  by  drunkards  are  commonplace  perils 
with  the  force. 

"Zhoo  know,"  Bob  sobbed,  "I  flew  over  that  dam'  rezh'- 
men'  once  an*  I  could  hear  the  brogue  of  the  Micks  a  mile  in 
the  air.  Well,  if  you're  r'Irishman,  you  ought  to  unnerstan' 
why  I've  got  to  fight  somebody.  If  you're  a  frien'  o'  mine, 
you'll  gimme  a  liT  battle  yourself.  I  just  nash'ally  got  to 
punsh  a  p'liceman." 

"I'll  be  glad  for  to  oblige  you,  but  I'm  off  duty  and  it 
wouldn't  count.  To-morrow  I'll  meet  you  wheriver  you 
like." 

"Thass  a  bet!"  said  Bob.  "Let's  meet  Ma'son  Square 
Gar'n." 

"You're  ahn !  And  now  hadn't  you  better  be  off  for  home 
to  tune  up  a  bit?  You'd  be  the  betther  for  a  little  alcohol 
rub  on  the  outside." 

309 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Bob  followed  this  dangled  thistle  with  asinine  solemnity: 
"Thass  insp'ration!  You're  a  zhenius,  and  I'll  beat  life 
out  of  you  with  greates'  poss'ble  affection." 

"And  where  might  you  be  havin'  your  trainin'-quarthers?" 

"The  Deucalion  's  my  dump,  but  I'm  not  goin'  there  yet — 
oh  no!  the  night  is  still  young  yet." 

"Too  bad!  for  my  way  lays  just  apast  the  Deucalion,  and 
there's  a  few  perliminaries  we  could  be  settlin'  were  you  goin' 
that  way." 

Bob  relented  at  once: 

"Well,  o'  course,  if  you're  afraid  to  go  home  in  the  dark, 
I'll  protec'  you.  You're  only  a  poor  liT  p'liceman,  and  you 
need  chaperon.  I'll  'scort  you  home,  but  remember!  to 
morrow  I'm  goin'  to  knock  your  dam'  block  off." 

"That's  my  understandin'  of  it  entirely,"  said  Twomey. 

And  so  they  made  their  way,  the  policeman  in  slow  strides 
and  Bob  with  a  corkscrew  gait. 

Bob  had  nothing  of  importance  to  communicate,  but  he 
communicated  it  in  a  most  important  manner;  and  by 
means  of  incessant  repetitions  he  managed  to  cover  all  the 
territory  available  with  a  minimum  of  material. 

He  talked  after  the  method  of  a  poet  writing  a  triolet,  a 
rondel,  or  any  of  those  forms  with  lines  incessantly  recurrent. 

"Whass  name,  ossifer?"  he  babbled.  "Whass  name?  I 
say,  whass  name?  Don't  you  know  y'  own  name?  Typilcal 
N'York  p'liceman!  too  stoopid  know  's  own  name.  Well, 
needn't  get  s'mad  about  it.  What'f  you  did  tell  me  three 
four  times?  What  else  you  got  to  do?  Needn't  get  mad 
about  it.  What  if  you  did  tell  me  three  four  times  ?  What  if 
you  told  me  siss  seven  ninety  times  ?  What  else  you  got  to  do  ? 

"Manners  is  somethigg,  ossifis! — Whass  name?  No  mat 
ter.  Don't  tell  me  if  you  don't  want  to.  Matter  of  no'm- 
portance  me.  Manners  is  somethigg,  though.  I'm  no  king 
or  belted  earl.  I'm  not  even  a  countess,  but  when  I  get  in 
elevator  I  always  lift  my  hat  if  ladies  presen'.  Always 
slif  mat  nelevator  fladies  pres'n'.  If  ladies  pres'n',  invari'ble 
rule  lif  tat.  Manners,  offis-officer — very  much  neglected, 
specially  in  New  York.  New  York  is  mos  till-mannered 
place  in  universe — in  whole  universe,  mos'  ill-man'  place 
N'York.  D'you  deny  it?  Nol  Well-ell,  since  you  don't 
deny  it,  I'll  prove  it  to  you. 

310 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"Tonight,  for  instance,  I  go  into  res'rant,  famous  hostil- 
lery,  and  I  go  into  res'rant,  an'  there  I  meet — who  suppose? 
Don't  try  suppose.  You'd  never  guess.  Nicest  girl  in 
world,  thass  all. 

"Nicest  girl  in  worl',  I  used  to  think.  I  don't  say  what 
I  think  now.  I  trust  I'm  gen'eman  enough  not  to  criticize 
lady  to  stranger,  or  even  mention  her  name.  Manners, 
misteroffersoff,  manners! 

"But  of  all  the  dam'  doutrageous,  treasherous  fiends  in 
human  form,  that  girl  is  it.  I'm  not  criticizin'  her,  but  it's 
heartbreaking  to  me  to  find  girl  I  trust  with  m'life  is  regular 
Judascariot.  O 'course  you  don't  know  whole  story,  and 
wild  horses  wouldn't  drag  out  of  me  her  name  or  what  she 
did.  Wild  horses  wouldn't.  Her  name  was  April  Shummer- 
lin,  and  what  do  you  suppose  she  did?  Don't  ask  me,  be 
cause  gemlenan's  conf'ence  is  inviola-invoali-inbolavolilable. 
Protect  woman  all  hazar's  is  my  motto. 

"And  this  's'ow  'twas.  Well,  I  go  in  there  and — I  may 
have  had  have  had  drink  or  two — few  innocen'  KT  ornzh- 
bloshms — no  harm  in  ornzh-bloshms — man  take  all  ornzh- 
bloshms  in  Unine  Stashe  and  never  feel  it,  couldn't  he? 
O'course  he  could.  I  did. 

"WThy,  when  I  went  nat  res'rant  I  was  sober  zam  now. 
Fact  is,  old  man,  I  can't  seem  get  drunk.  Seem  zabsloot 
limposs — imposs — impolysyllable  for  me  to  get  drunk. 
And  I've  had  sush  a  day  of  it  to-day !  If  you  only  knew!  I 
almos'  wanted  get  drunk.  But  could  I?  I  ask  you,  could 
I?  Not  a  damn  could  I ! 

"All  ornzh-bloshms  world  couldn't  drown  my  powers  of 
rishinashiotion — good  word,  huh  ?  ver'  nice  word.  I  learned 
it  college.  You  ever  been  college?  Course  not,  you  big 
Mick.  You  didn't  muss  mich,  though.  Whass  college 
teash  a  feller?  Powers  of  rashinoshition.  Thass  all.  But 
what  use  is  it  to  be  able  rashinosh  when  you're  only  roshi- 
nasher  in  town? 

"Can  April  Shumerln  use  powers  reason?  No!  abslooshy 
no!  Why>  when  I  walked  in  there,  sober  as  old  hoot-owl, 
that  girl—don't  ask  me  name — remember,  wild  horses! — 
don't  forget  wild  horses — 

"Well,  anyway,  Mish  Shumlinen  tried  reform  me!  Can 
you  beat  it?  Tried  reform  me!  Can  you  beat  it?  Said 

21  3" 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

I'd  had  enough!  Enough!  Oh  dear!  there  isn't  liquor 
enough  in  world  to  drown  my  poor  sorrows,  and  she  says 
a  few  ornzh-blossoms  drowned  me.  O  woman,  ooman! 

"Well,  jus'  then  along  came  baby-carriage  full  o'  booze. 
Must  have  been  baby-carriage  old  god  Backache  himself 
was  pushed  round  in.  Well,  when  I  saw  that — oh,  officer! 
But  would  you  believe  it?  Eleven  million  waiters  made  a 
trensh  raid  on  me!  I  counted  'em — level  mellion  witters! 
I  set  my  fists  goin'  like  old  propeller  my  old  airboat.  I 
smashed  waiters  till  I  got  so  tired — oh,  so  tired!  I  suppose 
I  mus'  'a'  pile  dup  sisseven  million  wai'rs.  Then  I  was  so 
tired — gets  awful  monot'nous  pilin'  up  wai'ers — so  I  just 
walked  out.  I  just  contempshously  shook  the  feet  off  my 
dust  and  walk  tout. 

"Manners  is  somethigg,  after  all,  officer.  My  name's 
Tasster,  and  no  Tasster  ever  stayed  in  res'rant  where  eleven 
malion  wetters  tried  push  'mout." 

He  yawned  vastly,  and  decided  that  he  would  take  a  little 
well-earned  repose  on  the  curb,  but  Twomey  lugged  him 
along,  combining  the  technic  of  arresting  a  thug  with  the 
technic  of  soothing  a  petulant  child. 

By  the  time  they  reached  the  Deucalion  fatigue  and  drow 
siness  were  beginning  to  suffocate  Bob's  soul.  The  vertical 
posture  was  intolerable;  he  was  in  a  horizontal  humor. 

Officer  Twomey  suggested  that  he  might  go  up  and  borrow 
a  cigar  off  Bob  before  he  went  home.  Bob  was  delighted  at 
the  suggestion,  but  he  was  drifting  far  away.  The  elevator- 
boy  liked  Bob,  and  smiled  indulgently  as  he  took  the  officer 
up  and  opened  Bob's  door  with  a  pass-key. 

At  the  sight  of  his  bed  Bob  went  over  like  a  felled  cedar, 
with  his  limbs  in  four  directions.  Twomey  took  off  his  shoes 
and  his  clothes  with  much  rolling  and  hunching,  straightened 
him  out,  covered  him  up,  opened  a  window  and  let  in  a  gale 
of  air  already  vibrant  with  the  reveille  of  dawn. 

He  paused  a  moment  to  look  across  the  innumerable  roofs 
still  smothered  in  night  and  the  last  of  sleep,  and  at  the  vast 
metropolis  of  the  sky  with  its  countless  street-lamps  and  its 
unfathomable  communities. 

He  looked  to  the  east,  where  the  dark  was  a  little  less  dark. 
It  came  to  him  that  the  sun  was  high  over  France  now,  and 
shining  on  the  fields  where  the  American  dead  were  sown. 

312 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

In  one  of  those  cities  of  crosses,  one  cross  was  slanting  above 
the  earth-blanketed  form  of  his  boy. 

That  boy  had  been  wild  when  sober  and  ugly  drunk,  and 
Twomey  had  learned  patience  with  him  from  the  lad's 
mother.  He  was  solemnly  glad  that  his  son  and  he  had 
been  friends,  and  had  wrung  hands  before  the  boy  went  for 
a  soldier  but  did  not  die  for  Ireland  after  all. 

The  big  policeman  felt  old  and  fatherly,  and  his  heart 
swelled  in  his  great  breast  as  he  smiled  at  Bob  where  the 
boy  lay  in  a  brief,  ignoble  death,  a  hero,  for  all  the  babbling, 
brawling  insanity  of  his  escapade. 

It  came  to  Twomey  as  he  walked  home  that  Bob  had 
probably  sunk  to  this  muddy  degradation  as  an  escape  from 
some  unbearable  misfortune  to  get  away  from  killing  thoughts 
— somewhat  as  the  soldiers  had  dug  into  the  slimy  trenches 
for  refuge  from  the  dreadful  things  that  filled  the  air. 

And  that  was  so. 

Bob's  folly  was  always  pushing  him  off  some  dock  or  other 
into  water  far  over  his  head.  But  somebody  always  jumped 
in  after  him. 

Total  strangers  would  respond  to  his  need  as  quickly  as  old 
friends  who  knew  him.  There  was  a  kind  of  magnetism 
about  him  that  seemed  to  be  as  irresistible  as  it  was  inexplic 
able.  Such  a  man  is  more  mystic  than  any  of  these  lofty 
heroes  of -occult  gifts  and  superb  spiritual  endowments. 

Even  the  waiters  who  rushed  Bob  out  of  the  restaurant 
learned  to  like  him  during  the  brief  and  lively  passage  to  the 
door.  The  policeman  he  reviled  took  him,  not  to  the  cell 
he  had  earned,  but  to  the  bed  he  had  not  deserved. 

Far,  far  better  than  a  talent  for  taking  care  of  oneself  is  a 
genius  for  getting  oneself  taken  care  of. 

April,  however,  was  finished  with  Bob.  She  had  fallen 
out  of  love  with  that  aviator,  and  she  had  no  parachute.  It 
was  an  awful  bump  from  clouds  to  clods. 

No  martyr  in  the  flames,  no  good  woman  stripped  before  a 
jeering  multitude,  could  have  felt  more  intense  torment  and 
confusion  than  April  during  the  period  between  Bob's 
idiotic  entrance  and  his  contemptible  exit.  She  never  knew 
how  she  got  out  of  the  place  alive.  Her  face  was  streaks  of 
red  and  white,  like  a  barber-pole. 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

So  April  was  no  longer  in  love  with  Bob.  He  had  humili 
ated  and  degraded  her  beyond  endurance.  And  she  would 
never  care  for  him  again — never!  Nothing  handsome  that 
he  could  ever  do  could  atone  for  what  he  had  done. 

Bob,  however,  was  not  one  of  those  who  atone  for  a 
wrong  with  a  right;  he  effaced  the  first  wrong  by  committing 
a  worse  one.  Furthermore,  Bob  was  not  one  of  those  who 
win  people  by  doing  nice  things  for  them;  he  won  them  by 
presenting  them  with  opportunities  to  do  magnanimous 
things  for  him.  And  magnanimous  deeds  feel  about  as 
good  as  anything  this  side  of  Paradise. 

But  April  was  definitely  and  finally  and  everlastingly  done 
with  Bob.  At  last  she  was  saved  from  letting  him  wreck 
her  life  as  well  as  his  own.  Something  at  least  to  the  good 
has  been  accomplished  thus  far. 

Of  course,  if  April  should  see  Bob  pushed  off  a  dock,  or 
walking  off  a  dock  into  terribly  deep  water — well,  she  would 
not  fall  in  love.  She  would  jump  in. 

But  it  would  have  to  be  terribly  deep  water. 


CHAPTER  III 

A.10NG  all  the  sleepless  sleepers  in  New  York,  none  suf 
fered  more  than  Professor  Zebulon  Taxter.  His  body 
was  determined  to  go  to  sleep,  and  his  brain  was  afraid  to 
let  it. 

No  saint  had  ever  acted  with  a  purer  altruism  and  no 
thief  ever  suffered  purer  remorse.  Zeb  was  as  dismayed  at 
what  he  had  done  as  Bob  was.  The  success  of  his  insane 
act  was  bewildering.  He  could  not  imagine  how  he  had 
got  down  those  stairs  without  breaking  his  neck.  He 
credited  the  Lord  with  upholding  him  and  placing  that  old 
hack  exactly  at  that  spot,  just  as  He  had  set  the  whale  just 
right  for  Jonah  to  drop  into. 

Ordinarily,  a  cab-driver  will  pause  to  ask  for  a  specific 
address.  But  Hob  Doat  had  had  few  fares  recently,  and  he 
accepted  Bronx  Park  as  destination  enough.  He  thanked 
Heaven  for  sending  him  even  an  old  negro  for  passenger,  as 
perhaps  the  whale  thanked  the  Lord  even  for  an  ejected 
prophet. 

By  the  time  Zeb  had  got  his  breath  he  craned  his  neck  to 
see  through  the  dirty  little  mica  porthole  in  the  back  of  the 
cab.  He  could  see  no  one  pursuing,  and  he  settled  back  with 
a  sigh  of  joy  into  the  sweet  chariot  that  had  swung  low, 
comin'  for  to  carry  him  home. 

His  brain  began  to  fidget  as  to  a  place  of  concealment. 
He  dared  not  return  to  his  Thirty-third  Street  haunt,  be 
cause  the  police  would  undoubtedly  go  there  at  once.  Had 
he  not  distributed  business-cards  all  over  town?  The  one 
he  gave  Miss  Summerlin  had  brought  him  back  into  the 
Taxter  fold.  He  was  out  of  it  now  as  the  blackest  of  sheep. 
He  had  done  been  and  gone  and  run  off  again.  But  some 
day  he  would  go  and  come  home  again,  too. 

The  main  thing  for  the  present  was  to  keep  from  getting 
arrested — to  lose  himself  so  that  he  could  stay  lost  till  he  was 
ready  to  unlose  himself. 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

During  his  years  in  New  York  Zeb  had  made  many 
friends.  He  was  a  church  member  in  good  standing.  He 
belonged  to  several  lodges,  benevolent  associations,  and 
clubs;  he  was  what  is  known  as  a  "joiner."  He  had  been 
a  distinguished  member  of  a  committee  to  welcome  home 
colored  soldiers. 

He  was  a  fairly  important  man  in  that  world  within  a  world, 
the  negro  community.  He  was  not  rich  or  lettered,  like  some 
of  the  real-estate  men,  landlords,  editors,  and  merchants  of 
his  race.  He  had  not  made  a  fortune  by  selling  a  chemical 
guaranteed  to  take  the  kink  out  of  the  hair — usually  also 
taking  the  hair  out  of  the  conk.  But  he  was  a  sage,  venerated 
for  his  years,  his  solemnity,  and  the  big  words  he  used. 

Up- town  there,  there  were  "black  belts"  where  dealers  in 
what  is  called  "colored  real  estate"  established  shady  oases 
in  the  white  desert.  These  oases  were  growing  all  the  time, 
as  more  and  more  of  the  negroes  came  up  from  the  South 
to  escape  lynching  bees  and  gain  opportunities.  Many  of 
the  black  soldiers  who  had  been  drafted  out  of  the  cotton- 
fields  and  sent  to  Europe  (where  they  saw  black  troops 
treated  as  equals  by  foreign  men  and  women)  came  back  to 
settle  in  New  York. 

The  race  problem  of  the  South,  at  which  the  North  had 
wondered  with  incredulous  contempt,  was  shifting  rapidly 
to  the  North,  and  bringing  with  it  its  old_concomitants  of 
horror  and  slaughter.  The  labor  unions  were  finding  the 
negro  workman  a  hard  problem  to  digest :  he  was  willing  and 
able  to  carry  a  heavy  load,  and  proud  to  take  a  wage  that 
organized  white  labor  despised. 

The  race  riots  in  Chicago,  Omaha,  and  Washington  had 
their  real  origin  in  the  intractable  despotic  mood  that  labor 
had  acquired  after  a  generation  of  coddling  by  moralists, 
poets,  and  sentimentalists,  who  all  too  easily  persuaded 
working-men  that  the  use  of  the  hands  in  toil  is  a  pitiful 
slavery,  and  that  a  small  wage  is  a  proof  not  of  a  lack  of 
energy  or  ability  in  the  earner,  but  of  a  brutal  robbery  by  his 
employer. 

This  sentiment  reached  its  climax  in  1919,  and  the  down 
trodden  laborer  became  so  ruthless  a  shirker,  and  so  destruc 
tive  a  downtreader,  that  public  opinion  sickened  of  him. 
The  labor  oligarchy  found  itself  stranded  on  the  rocks  and 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

confounded  with  all  sorts  of  Socialists,  Bolshevists,  and 
Anarchists. 

The  negro  problem  seemed  to  be  one  of  the  next  national 
agonies.  It  was  stirring  and  simmering  like  a  geyser  in  its 
depths,  preparing  for  an  ebullition  that  should  carry  it  to 
no  one  knew  what  a  shot  in  the  air  before  it  should  fall  back 
and  subside,  as  the  most  scalding  geysers  do — for  a  while. 

Zeb,  however,  had  no  friends  among  the  restive  negroes. 
His  kind  were  the  meek  and  lowly,  who  accepted  their  dark 
skins  as  a  cross  that  Heaven  had  given  them  to  bear,  and 
would  reward  them  for  wearing  peacefully. 

He  bethought  him  at  last  of  a  humble  couple  in  Harlem. 
Mrs.  Rideout  was  a  chocolate  mound,  her  husband  a  huge 
licorice  stick.  She  went  out  by  the  day  to  wash  in  people's 
homes,  and  he  went  out  by  the  day  to  drive  an  ash-cart. 
They  had  formerly  lived  near  Zeb  when  he  dwelt  on  San 
Juan  Hill,  and  had  met  in  a  church  where  Sister  Chloe  was 
a  loud  exhorter  and  Brother  Eph  a  sonorous  Amenster. 

When  they  moved  North  they  had  invited  Zeb  to  call 
upon  them,  but  he  had  never  paid  them  a  visit.  Now  he 
ransacked  the  old  rubbish-container  of  his  head  and  dug  the 
address  out  of  his  memory  before  the  cab  had  gone  a  mile. 

He  tapped  on  the  front  glass  and,  leaning  out  at  the  open 
door,  told  the  driver  the  address,  explaining: 

"I've  change'  my  mine  abote  Bronnix  Pahk." 

"Aw-awl  right!"  snapped  the  driver,  hoping  that  his 
horse  had  not  heard  the  distance  he  had  yet  to  go. 

When  Zeb  finally  decabbed  at  the  door  of  the  Hideouts' 
apartment-house,  paid  his  fare,  and  took  a  certain  pride  in 
letting  himself  be  robbed  a  little,  he  looked  up  at  the  sign: 
"The  San  Miguel.  Respectable  Colored  Families." 

It  pleased  certain  negroes  to  pretend  that  they  were  of 
Cuban  extraction. 

Zeb  found  that  Mrs.  Rideout  was  away  at  work,  but  Eph 
had  finished  his  day,  and  he  made  Professor  Taxter  welcome. 

Zeb  expounded  the  elaborate  lie  he  had  developed  and 
memorized  on  the  way  up,  and  accounted  for  his  precious 
vacuum-cleaner : 

"I  been  vacurum-cleanin'  up-taown,  and  I  remembered 
you-all's  invitin'  me  to  drap  in.  So  yere  I  yam." 

Mr.  Rideout  received  him  royally.    The  wages  of  team- 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

sters  had  soared,  and  laundresses  were  receiving  better  pay 
than  college  professors.  When  Mrs.  Rideout  arrived,  Zeb 
pretended  that  he  could  not  stay  to  supper,  just  for  the 
luxury  of  being  coaxed.  She  coaxed  him. 

Mrs.  Rideout  complained  that  owing  to  the  dearth  of 
servants  she  had  to  do  her  own  housework.  But  she  was 
one  of  those  cooks  that  made  Southern  cooking  famous,  and 
Zeb  and  Eph  sat  in  the  kitchen  and  fed  their  eyes  and  nos 
trils  on  the  preparations  for  the  feast.  After  supper  Zeb 
continued  to  sit  and  talk  and  talk,  and  by  and  by  he  heard 
the  words  he  was  waiting  for. 

There  was  a  spare  room,  and  he  was  urged  to  spend  the 
night.  Very  artfully  he  mingled  his  protests  that  he  could 
not  think  of  it  and  his  confession  that  it  would  save  him 
a  long  journey  down-  and  a  long  journey  up-town  again 
the  next  morning;  and  at  length  permitted  himself  to  be 
coerced. 

When  his  host  and  hostess  finally  decided  to  "retiah" 
he  went  to  his  room  with  a  feeling  of  shame  at  forcing  them 
to  shelter  the  criminal  he  was.  He  got  into  bed  and  lay 
with  his  arm  around  the  precious  container  of  the  stolen 
funds.  Then  he  lifted  it  into  the  bed  and  covered  it. 

He  spent  a  miserable  night;  his  furious  dreams  were  not 
nightmares,  but  night-bloodhounds  chasing  him  from  tor 
ment  to  torment.  He  had  a  vast  amount  of  dream  lore  in 
his  superstitious  head,  and  the  appearance  of  the  simplest 
objects  in  his  visions  had  terrifying  significances  that  he 
shivered  over  while  he  waked. 

His  imagination  wore  itself  out  at  dawn,  and  he  fell  into 
such  a  profound  sleep  that  when  his  host  peeked  in  he  had 
not  the  heart  to  disturb  him. 

Even  the  noise  and  the  savor  of  breakfast  did  not  penetrate 
to  his  senses.  His  perfect  hostess  left  a  breakfast  to  keep 
warm  for  him  on  the  gas-stove,  and  therewith  a  little  note: 

"  Hep  yoresef  and  turn  of  the  gass  and  cal  agan  sune  " 

It  was  well  on  in  the  forenoon  when  Zeb  woke  and  found 
himself  alone  in  a  strange  bed.  He  thought  it  was  a  jail  room 
at  first,  but  gradually  remembered. 

He  rose,  washed,  dressed,  fed  handsomely  on  the  break 
fast,  and  sat  down  to  think.  He  fancied  that  all  of  the 
police  in  New  York  were  on  his  trail.  He  peered  out  of  the 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

window  to  see  if  they  had  him  treed.  No  one  was  in  sight, 
unless  he  were  disguised  as  a  loiterer. 

Zeb  supposed  that  the  morning  papers  were  full  of  him, 
and  ventured  at  last  to  look  out  into  the  hall.  Seeing  a 
small  negro  girl  going  down  the  stairs,  he  bribed  her  to  fetch 
him  a  morning  paper. 

The  head-lines  at  least  did  not  contain  him.  He  read  every 
line  of  the  paper,  including  the  advertisements,  understanding 
little  except  the  fact  that  he  was  not  mentioned,  nor  his 
master  nor  the  ten  thousand  dollars. 

He  felt  a  trifle  disappointed,  insulted,  somehow,  in  spite 
of  his  relief.  His  reverence  for  the  all-seeing  eye  of  the 
newspapers  received  a  shock. 

And  now  he  was  alone  indeed — not  even  worth  a  line. 
Unless,  perhaps,  the  police  were  keeping  the  affair  secret  in 
order  to  give  him  a  false  sense  of  security. 

But  he  could  never  have  a  sense  of  security  while  he  was 
alone  and  cursed  with  all  that  money.  It  belonged  to  his 
master,  as  he  himself  did,  and  his  supreme  desire  was  to  get 
back  to  the  family  with  it. 

The  childish  old  ape  was  as  blue  as  a  dog  that  has  run 
away  from  home  and  regretted  it.  He  was  working  round 
slowly  but  surely  to  the  inevitable  conclusion  that  he  would 
rather  go  back  and  take  his  whipping  than  stay  away  any 
longer. 

He  was  afraid,  though,  to  try  to  get  back  to  Bob,  for  fear 
the  police  would  seize  him  and  drag  him  off  to  a  cell,  with 
never  a  chance  to  explain. 

And  if  he  reached  Master  Bob  he  would  probably  be  re 
fused  a  hearing.  He  had  already  been  told  that  he  was  fired. 
That  was  impossible,  of  course,  but  how  could  he  make  sure 
of  persuading  Bob  to  give  him  another  chance? 

He  thought  of  sending  the  money  back  first,  as  a  proof  of 
his  loyalty.  But  how  could  he  send  it?  By  hand?  Whom 
could  he  trust?  By  mail?  Or  express?  Would  it  ever  get 
there? 

The  more  he  floundered  tne  more  he  wound  himself  up 
in  rope. 

Who  would  untie  him  and  intercede  for  him? 

In  the  storm-clouds  about  him  only  one  face  shone  out — 
the  pretty,  the  angelic  countenance  of  Miss  April,  whom  he 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

had  instantly  accepted  as  worthy  of  being  the  wife  of  his 
master. 

The  first  day  he  saw  her,  didn't  she  help  him  out  of  the 
elevator  and  lend  her  white  hand  to  the  task  of  untangling 
the  vacuum  hose  ?  She  was  his  one  hope. 

But  he  who  imagined  so  vigorously  had  not  imagined  the 
present  state  of  April's  feelings  after  her  encounter  with  Bob 
at  the  restaurant. 


CHAPTER  IV 

KATE  and  Joe  debated  a  long  while  over  schemes  for 
taking  away  with  them  more  cash  than  they  had. 

Their  procedure  is  interesting,  perhaps,  as  a  specimen  of 
one  way  that  New  York  gets  a  bad  name. 

Kate  and  Joe,  two  wicked  persons  from  the  far  South, 
met  a  man  who  had  come  on  from  the  far  West;  they  played 
upon  his  evil  motives,  robbing  him  of  money  he  had  stolen 
in  the  West.  Later  they  caught  a  vicious  man  from  the  far 
East  in  his  own  trap,  and  robbed  him. 

Not  one  of  the  persons  concerned  was  born  in  New  York 
or  belonged  there,  but  to  New  York  was  attributed  the  whole 
mischief. 

Joe  relied  on  the  pistol  that  Bob  had  returned  to  him,  and 
he  was  for  sticking  up  the  cashier  of  a  dance-hall  or  a  movie- 
palace.  Kate  objected  that  it  was  dangerous  to  work  in  a 
crowd,  where  some  blind  fool  might,  from  excess  of  courage 
or  of  fear,  jump  and  cling,  or  shoot  and  hit,  and  wreck  the 
high  enterprise. 

Kate  preferred  something  more  quiet,  subtle,  congenial, 
in  a  scene  remote  from  the  police. 

Joe  deferred  to  her  womanly  intuition,  and  they  set  out 
on  the  hunt  for  such  game  as  might  cross  their  path.  They 
kept  near,  but  just  off,  the  "Broadway  of  Harlem,"  One 
Hundred  and  Twenty-fifth  Street,  wide  and  bright  and  cheap 
as  tinsel.  Joe  dropped  back  as  they  approached  a  certain 
restaurant,  "The  La  Joy  Cafe","  a  bower  of  shoddy  gauds. 

Kate  went  in  alone  and  found  a  seat  by  herself,  where  she 
ordered  a  drink.  This  advertised  her  as  a  reckless  person; 
her  face  and  garb  advertised  her  other  attractions. 

Because  "The  La  Joy"  was  obscure  and  yet  hilarious, 
Kate  had  chosen  it  for  the  "location"  of  the  movie  scenario 
she  had  improvised  from  well-worn  sure-fire  material. 
Because  "The  La  Joy"  was  obscure  and  yet  hilarious,  a 

321 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

certain  man  from  the  West  had  chosen  it  as  a  safe  place  to 
come  up  for  air. 

"Honest  Jack"  Gabe  was  born  and  bred  in  the  cattle 
country,  where  the  best  of  good  men  come  from,  as  we  are 
assured  by  countless  writers  and  by  critics  of  wicked  metro 
politan  fiction.  He  had  none  of  the  disadvantages  of  life 
in  the  vile  cities,  but  grew  up  under  God's  own  sky,  close  to 
nature.  Hence  he  was  rugged,  fearless,  brawny,  and  yet 
gentle  as  a  woman  except  when  aroused;  in  fact,  he  was  just 
like  all  Westerners. 

And  so  in  time  he  became  the  cashier  of  a  bank  in  the  small 
and  well- ventilated  town  with  the  playful  title  of  Cattleina. 
There  was  a  good  deal  of  whisky,  harlotry,  murder,  and 
crooked  gambling  in  Cattleina,  after  dark;  but  the  town  had 
no  vices,  being  in  the  West. 

Honest  Jack,  unfortunately,  lost  too  much  at  cards,  and  fell 
into  the  habit  of  taking  the  money  of  the  depositors — with 
the  best  intentions  of  putting  it  back,  of  course.  He  was  as 
honest  as  the  day  is  long.  Unfortunately,  his  nights  were 
still  longer,  and  by  and  by  he  was  in  so  deep  that  he  went  on 
through. 

He  took  all  the  cash  and  negotiable  securities  the  bank 
had,  and  then  he  took  the  eastbound  express.  His  photo 
graph  and  description,  and  the  offer  of  a  reward,  followed 
him  to  New  York.  The  expectation  of  this  cramped  his 
style  as  a  Lothario,  and  reduced  him  to  sore  straits  for 
amusement.  He  spent  a  good  deal  of  his  time  and  most  of 
his  money  in  pool-rooms,  but  he  had  been  frightened  even 
from  this  most  stupid  known  form  of  sport  by  a  series  of 
raids.  He  could  not  afford  to  get  arrested  even  for  carrying 
a  pistol,  for  he  would  not  be  let  off  with  a  fine.  He  would 
be  shipped  back  to  Cattleina,  where  the  depositors  would 
probably  save  the  state  the  expense  of  boarding  him  at  the 
penitentiary  by  cordially  depositing  him  from  the  limb  of  a 
tree. 

Honest  Jack  was  just  about  convinced  that  honesty  is  the 
best  policy.  He  was  blue  enough  to  risk  arrest  for  the  sake 
of  a  kind  word  from  some  human  being,  preferably  a  "gal " — 
as  a  young  woman  is  affectionately  called  in  the  West. 

On  this  night  he  slipped  into  "The  La  Joy,"  whose  merry 
scene  Kate  had  chosen  to  adorn.  The  sight  of  her  solitary 

322 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

beauty  inflamed  him.  He  caught  her  eye  again  and  again, 
and  finally  she  granted  his  ocular  appeal,  and  indicated  a 
willingness  to  receive  him  as  a  guest  by  moving  over  a  little 
on  the  long  imitation-leather  wall-seat  which  gave  the  place 
an  imitation  Parisian  look. 

Honest  Jack  strode  over  to  Kate,  carrying  his  honest 
Stetson — he  had  not  yet  sunk  so  low  as  to  disgrace  his  head 
with  one  of  the  fashionable  hats.  He  and  Kate  were  im 
mediately  as  good  friends  as  if  they  were  members  of  the 
same  lodge. 

Honest  Jack  was,  like  all  Westerners,  slow  of  speech, 
metaphorical  of  language,  and  big  of  heart,  and  Kate  won  his 
sympathy  by  confessing  that  she  was  a  desperate  woman. 
Her  husband  had  deserted  her  a  week  before — had  run  off  to 
Canada  with  Another.  Kate  moaned  that  she  had  stayed  in 
her  lonely  home  till  she  could  stand  it  no  longer.  Honest 
Jack  could  understand  her  perfectly.  She  just  had  to  have 
a  little  human  companionship,  she  said;  and  she  didn't  care 
what  happened. 

Honest  Jack  tried  to  console  her  in  his  rough-diamond 
way.  Champagne  was  trebly  a  tribute  now,  since  its  price 
had  trebled  and  more,  so  Jack  ordered  a  bottle  of  champagne 
wine,  and,  like  all  Westerners,  said,  "Here's  how!" 

When  he  paid  his  check  he  took  from  the  inside  pocket  of 
his  honest  store-clothes  vest  a  fat  bundle  of  folded  bills. 
He  peeled  off  a  yellow  boy,  and  put  the  wad  back  carefully. 
It  was  all  that  remained  of  the  depositors'  money. 

Kate  felt  that  it  was  going  to  be  a  pleasant  and  profitable 
evening — nearly  as  sweet  as  the  imitation  champagne. 
Honest  Jack  was  too  noble  to  count  the  short  change  the 
waiter  brought  him.  He  swept  it  into  his  pants  pocket.  He 
came  from  the  country  where  waiters  do  not  expect  to  be 
insulted  by  tips. 

Kate  sighed  and  murmured  a  shy  regret  at  having  to  leave 
so  nice  a  gempman  and  go  back  to  that  awful  lonely  flat. 
And  Jack,  being  one  of  nature's  gempmen,  said  he  couldn't 
see  how  it  was  absolutely  necessary  for  her  to  go  back  alone. 
He  was  sort  of  lonesome  his  own  self,  and  how  about  poolin1 
them  two  lonesomenesses  and  makin'  it  a  jackpot? 

Kate  was  ever  so  grateful,  and  coyly  consented.  She 
folded  up  the  big  bill  of  fare,  with  its  menu  mimeographed  in 

323 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

purple  ink.     She  said  she  wanted  it  as  a  souvenir  of  one  who 
was  certain'y  a  perfect  gempman,  if  God  ever  made  one. 

Jack  called  a  taxicab,  and  Kate  gave  the  driver  an  address 
across  the  Park.  In  the  gloom  Honest  Jack  forgot  his  timidity, 
and  when  Kate  snuggled  in  his  arms  and  wept  he  comforted 
her  as  only  a  stalwart  Westerner  can  comfort  a  little  woman 
who  has  been  maltreated  by  one  of  nature's  ignoblemen. 

After  Kate  had  sobbed  awhile  fear  began  to  chill  her.  She 
began  to  tell  of  the  cruelty  and  treachery  of  her  husband.  He 
was  wanted  for  killing  a  man.  She  had  not  known  this,  of 
course,  till  after  she  had  married  him  in  her  innocence.  She 
had  stuck  by  him,  though,  and  been  a  good  wife  to  him.  But 
how  had  he  rewarded  her?  With  suspicion  and  brutality! 
If  she  ever  looked  at  a  man,  her  husband  wanted  to  kill  him. 
He  had  taken  a  shot  at  one  poor  fellow,  too,  who  had  merely 
seen  her  home  once  when  she  felt  faint  on  a  street-car.  But 
those  jealous  ones  are  the  worst  kind!  Wouldn't  you  just 
know  that  kind  of  a  man  would  run  off  with  another  woman  ? 
Wasn't  that  the  world?  Shoot  at  his  wife  if  a  man  was  just 
polite  to  her,  but  if  he  saw  anybody  he  liked,  away  he  goes ! 
Leastways,  she  reckoned  he'd  gone.  She  was  told  so  by  a 
certain  party.  Of  course,  she  didn't  know  for  sure. 

Maybe  the  police  had  got  him!  They  were  always  after 
him.  They  took  him  once,  but  he  got  away,  and  you  should 
have  seen  him  when  he  came  back  unexpected  and  caught 
her  just  talkin'  to  a  gas-meter  man,  and — if  the  man  hadn't 
had  his  book  in  his  hand  and  been  writin'  in  it,  he'd  never 
have  read  another  meter.  He'd  have  been  killed,  for  her 
husband  always  had  a  gun,  somehow,  and  he  didn't  care 
who  he  shot. 

By  this  time  Honest  Jack  was  in  a  gentle  sweat,  not  alto 
gether  due  to  the  balmy  zephyrs.  He  was  in  a  state  of  per 
fect  psychological  preparation  for  what  followed. 

The  cab  stopped  at  the  door  of  one  of  those  super-solitary 
apartments  where  the  hall  door  is  opened  by  push-button 
from  tenants  aloft  warned  by  push-button  below. 

Honest  Jack  stepped  out  with  an  anxious  look  up  and 
down  the  street,  helped  Kate  down,  and  paid  the  taxi-driver, 
who  taxidrove  away. 

Kate  paused  to  look  for  her  key,  and  cautiously  peered  into 
the  hallway.  She  fell  back  with  a  gasp  and  a  whisper: 

324 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"My  God!  my  husband's  come  home!  He's  waitin'  for 
me.  Looks  like  he's  got  a — yes,  it's  a  gun!  Run  quick! 
Don't  let  him  see  you  or  he'll —  Oh,  run!  run!" 

And  Honest  Jack  ran,  as  any  honest  man  would  do  in  like 
circumstances — as  much  for  the  lady's  sake  as  his  own — 
perhaps  a  little  more  for  his  own. 

His  long  legs  ran  him  in  good  stead,  until  the  sight  of  a 
policeman  in  silhouette  under  a  lamp-post  checked  him.  Jack 
was  a  little  afraider  of  a  policeman  than  of  a  shooting 
husband. 

He  walked  past  the  policeman  nonchalantly,  without 
breathing,  till  he  had  turned  the  next  corner.  There  he 
paused  for  breath.  As  he  ran,  he  had  kept  his  hand  on  his 
waistcoat  to  keep  the  bundle  of  money  from  falling  out. 
Something  impelled  him  to  make  doubly  sure  that  he 
had  it,  and  he  reached  for  it  stealthily.  It  did  not  feel 
natural.  He  moved  closer  to  the  next  lamp-post.  His 
money  was  the  carefully  folded  bill  of  fare  he  had  seen  the 
woman  take  for  a  souvenir.  His  thousand  dollars  was  a 
purple  scrawl  of  things  to  eat:  "steamed  clams,  boiled  live 
lobster,  shrimps!'* 

While  Kate  had  wept  on  his  manly  bosom  she  had  com 
pletely  unmanned  him.  Honest  Jack  ran  round  the  corner 
and  all  the  way  back.  If  that  policeman  had  got  in  his  way, 
Honest  Jack  would  have  trampled  him  under.  When  he 
reached  the  lonely  apartment-house,  of  course  Kate  and  her 
husband  were  not  there.  Honest  Jack  played  scales  on  the 
push-button  keyboard  till  the  door  was  jiggled  open  and  all 
the  tenants  were  out  in  the  halls  and  the  janitor  up  from 
the  basement. 

Of  course,  no  such  persons  as  Kate  and  her  husband  had 
ever  lived  there.  And  Honest  Jack  went  his  uncertain  way, 
cursing  the  wickedness  of  the  modern  Babylon. 

The  depositors'  money,  or  what  was  left  of  it,  was  now  safe 
in  the  hands  of  Joe  and  Kate.  They  had  stood  for  a  few 
precious  seconds,  watching  Honest  Jack  as  he  made  his  first 
outbound  dash — or  (as  Joe  worded  it)  "took  it  on  the  Dan 
O'Leary." 

Then  they  had  fled  together  to  a  taxicab,  and  so  home. 

Their  laughter  nearly  split  their  sides  as  they  split  the  wad 
of  the  poor  boob  from  "God's  country." 

325 


CHAPTER  V 

HPHE  next  morning  found  Joe  and  Kate  still  laughing  the 
1   inextinguishable  laughter  of  successful  thieves. 

But  sweet  as  stolen  fruit  may  be,  it  is  not  always  sufficient. 
To  revert  to  the  text  at  the  beginning  of  this  story :  nobody 
ever  had  just  enough  money. 

Kate  sighed:  "We  can't  leave  this  man's  town  with  only 
this  one  little  orn'ry  thousand  dolla's.  Dough  is  too  loose 
round  here  to  leave  it  lay  without  grabbin'  off  a  mite  mo' 
on  the  way  out." 

Joe  answered  solemnly,  using  the  very  words  reported  to 
have  been  employed  later  by  the  Mayoress  of  a  large  Ameri 
can  city  in  answer  to  a  polite  observation  by  the  visiting 
sovereign  from  Belgium: 

"Queen,  you  said  a  mouthful." 

The  problem  for  Kate  and  Joe  was  just  what  money  to 
try  for  next.  They  debated  a  long  while,  each  suggesting 
some  wild  project  for  the  other  to  reject.  At  last  Kate,  who 
could  never  forget  the  chagrin  of  losing  the  Taxter  necklace, 
bethought  her,  as  so  often,  of  diamonds — shiners. 

"Shinas!"  said  Kate.     "I  got  to  take  away  some  shinas!" 

All  forms  of  jewelry  had  gone  skyward  in  price  with  the 
rest  of  human  necessities.  The  war  had  shut  down  the 
diamond-mines  and  restricted  the  output  for  years.  This, 
of  course,  made  them  only  the  more  desirable. 

Gems  were  quite  the  rage  among  fashionable  thieves. 
There  were  the  usual  quiet  atrocities  committed  by  wives 
upon  their  husbands,  and  sweethearts  upon  their  lovers,  in 
the  form  of  theft  by  persuasion,  coercion,  and  shame,  with  a 
resultant  diversion  of  funds  from  the  proper  usages. 

There  were  also  gigantic  burglaries  in  homes  and  hotels. 
Nearly  every  paper  advertised  some  woman  as  having  lost 
far  more  mineral  wealth  than  she  had  been  suspected  of 
having.  It  is  bitter  to  acquire  fame  by  losing  wealth. 

326 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

To  lift  a  forty-thousand-dollar  lavalliere  is  a  crime  of  the 
first  water,  and  Kate  would  have  felt  that  murder  was  a 
reasonable  price  to  pay  for  the  opportunity. 

But  jewel  thefts  usually  impose  leisure  for  long  recon 
naissance,  and  time  was  what  Joe  and  Kate  could  least 
afford. 

The  big  shops  were  sure  to  be  well  guarded,  and  the  lesser 
ones  apt  to  be  cautious.  Joe  and  Kate  went  forth  for  a 
breath  of  air  and  a  study  of  the  terrain. 

On  upper  Third  Avenue  they  came  upon  a  pawnshop 
window  with  a  number  of  sparklers  displayed  among  the 
curious  clutter  of  things  that  people  hock. 

They  lingered  and  walked  past ;  then  decided  to  make  the 
venture.  They  discussed  the  strategy  in  technical  terms 
with  swift  understanding,  and  Joe  set  out  to  look  for  a  taxi- 
cab,  while  Kate  went  back  to  the  pawnshop  with  the  grim 
exultance  of  a  playwright  approaching  a  theater  where  his 
own  fate  is  to  be  settled. 

The  pawnbroker  was  alone,  and  he  looked  the  Shylock  as 
he  stood  quaint  and  hopeful  among  the  trophies  of  embar 
rassment  that  filled  his  window,  his  cases,  and  his  safe. 

The  law  had  cut  down  his  usury,  and  the  various  branches 
of  the  Provident  Loan  Society  showed  mercy  to  the  tem 
porary  or  permanent  poor.  So  this  ambitious  pawnbroker 
looked  for  his  real  opportunities  in  making  covert  deals  with 
thieves. 

He  acted  as  a  fence  when  he  dared,  and  his  was  a  pecul 
iarly  dishonest  dishonesty,  since  even  his  burglar  clients 
could  not  trust  him;  for  if  the  police  came  snooping  round, 
Mr.  Nosswitz  was  quick  to  expose  all  his  wares  and  protest 
his  innocence. 

If  any  of  the  missing  articles  were  identified,  he  promptly 
told  the  police  as  much  as  he  could  about  the  crook  who  had 
fooled  his  trusting  disposition.  He  protested  too  much,  his 
compulsory  daily  reports  were  plainly  doctored,  and  the 
police  despised  him,  as  they  do  all  their  stool-pigeons,  but 
they  found  him  useful  as  a  parasite  that  preyed  on  parasites. 

Into  the  shop  of  this  thief  from  thieves  Kate  entered 
shyly,  trying  to  "look  like  a  million  dollars."     She  was  wise 
enough  to  know  her  limitations  and  not  pretend  too  far. 
Her  dialect  at  least  was  natural: 
22  327 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"  I  saw  a  ring  in  yo*  window  that  looked  right  good  to  me, 
unless  you  have  betta." 

Mr.  Nosswitz  hastened  to  lift  it  out  and  lay  it  before  her 
for  examination.  She  was  not  satisfied. 

"Ma  husband,  you  see,  has  just  made  a  killin'  in  the  oil 
business.  We're  from  Texas,  you  know.  He's  simply 
foolish  rich,  and  he  wants  to  dress  me  up  like  a  hoss  and 
buggy. 

"I've  been  raound  to  Tiffany's  and  Marcuses  and  those 
places,  but,  heavens  alive,  they  want  a  wagon-load  of  money 
for  a  diamond  you  can't  see  with  a  microscope!" 

"It's  a  robbery  they  make,"  Mr.  Nosswitz  agreed,  with  a 
shrug  extending  to  his  finger-tips.  He  was  almost  per 
suaded  already  that  Kate  was  on  the  level .  And  he  suspected 
everybody  who  entered  his  store  of  being  there  to  sting  him 
one  way  or  another.  He  suspected  everybody  on  earth  of 
trying  to  sting  him.  He  had  left  Russia  under  the  conviction 
that  he  was  persecuted,  though  he  had  made  it  almost  impos 
sible  not  to  persecute  him.  He  had  suspected  America  from 
the  moment  he  saw  the  Statue  of  Liberty.  She  looked  to 
him  like  a  big  bronze  clock  ornament  already  turning  green. 
He  sneered  at  her. 

He  had  not  been  in  America  a  day  before  he  had  a  list  of 
grievances  as  long  as  his  beard.  Later,  he  had  sacrificed  his 
chin-banner,  and  he  shaved  now  and  then,  but  new  grievances 
grew  out  every  day  like  hair.  His  grievances  were  as  much 
his  own  excreta  as  his  whiskers,  and  it  would  have  been  as 
difficult  to  stop  their  growth.  It  was  his  discouragement 
that  was  indiscourageable. 

Kate  attacked  him  from  a  new  angle  by  admitting  that  she 
was  an  out-of-towner,  a  new-rich,  and  therefore  gullible. 
Mr.  Nosswitz  grew  so  enthusiastic  over  the  prospect  of 
cheating  her  that  he  almost  forgot  to  suspect  her.  She  led 
him  on  by  taking  out  a  large  amount  of  money  and  making 
as  if  to  pay  for  some  trinket,  only  to  change  her  mind  after 
every  ring,  brooch,  or  bracelet  that  he  displayed: 

"That's  too  cheap.  While  ma  husband  has  got  all  this 
money,  I  want  to  buy  something  wuth  whahl.  There's  no 
betta  investment  than  diamonds;  Liberty  Bonds  can't 
touch  'em,  do  you  think  so?" 

Mr.  Nosswitz  answered,  heartily,  "Sure  I  don't." 

328 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

Kate's  guilelessness,  her  ambition  to  spend,  and  her  ig 
norance  of  values  simply  overwhelmed  the  poor  man.  He 
began  to  bring  out  everything  in  the  shop  that  was  expensive, 
and  he  added  to  the  cost  recklessly. 

He  finally  unwrapped  a  long  bar  pin  of  big  diamonds  in 
platinum.  He  had  got  it  from  a  cherubic  bell-boy  in  a  large 
hotel.  Kate  admired  this  immensely,  but  she  hesitated  over 
a  choice  among  so  many  choices.  She  explained  her  delay : 

"I'm  expectin'  ma  husband  to  drop  in.  He  went  to  get 
some  good  cigars,  and  he's  comin1  right  along." 

The  moment  Kate  mentioned  an  expected  man  Mr.  Noss- 
witz  winced.  He  did  not  like  to  have  two  people  in  his  shop 
at  once.  Before  he  quite  realized  what  he  was  doing  he 
had  pressed  a  button  under  the  counter  ledge.  It  made  a 
little  noise  in  the  kitchen,  like  a  sleepy  rattlesnake's  warning. 

Mrs.  Nosswitz,  who  was  busy  in  her  combined  kitchen, 
drawing-room,  dining-room,  laundry,  nursery,  and  dormi 
tory,  dropped  her  work  and  moved  forward  with  a  large 
pistol  in  her  hand. 

Just  as  she  reached  a  well-masked  loophole  Mr.  Joe 
Yarmy  walked  in  the  front  door,  trying  to  look  like  two 
million  dollars. 

"Oh,  thah  you  ah,  honey,"  he  said  to  Kate.  "Found 
anything  you  like  yet?" 

"There's  several  nice  things,  ma  dear,"  said  Kate.  "What 
do  you  think  of  this  lavalleer?" 

As  Joe  drew  near,  Mr.  Nosswitz's  heart  began  to  bound  like 
a  chained  watchdog.  He  could  hear  it  bellow  and  feel  it 
plunge. 

Joe  reached  out  with  his  left  hand  to  take  the  concatena 
tion  of  jewels  that  Kate  held  out  for  him.  With  a  pretense 
of  great  courtesy,  Mr.  Nosswitz  snatched  it  himself  and  held 
it  out.  Joe  was  so  shocked  by  the  crass  behavior  that  he 
pushed  his  right  hand  into  his  pocket  and  brought  out  the 
same  gun  that  he  had  threatened  Bob  with,  only  now  he  got 
the  drop  first,  and  he  snapped: 

"Put  'em  up!" 

Mr.  Nosswitz's  hands  went  up  half-way  in  a  familiar 
gesture, 

"  On  up  1"  said  Joe. 

He  was  going  to  add,  "  Keep  'em  up  till  ma  wife  gathers  up 

3*9 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

the  stuff  and  gets  outside,  and  I  folia;  and  don't  come  to  the 
do',  for  I'll  shoot  from  the  window  of  the  taxi." 

That  was  what  he  planned  to  say,  and  Nosswitz  looked  an 
easy  victim.  His  hands  were  palsied  in  the  air,  and  it  was 
rather  his  terror  than  his  wisdom  that  led  him  to  cry  out: 

"Mamma!  don't  shooot  yet!" 

He  was  afraid  that  Mamma  would  shatter  him  and  a  lot 
of  expensive  glass  besides. 

Joe  and  Kate  were  petrified  by  the  sharp  cry  of  "  Mamma !" 
and  by  a  harsh  voice  from  some  vague  place,  uttering  a  pro 
fane  parody  of  their  own  phrase: 

"Foot  'em  ooop!" 

Kate  and  Joe  hoisted  their  hands  in  a  horror  of  disgust. 
Nosswitz  swept  the  gems  off  the  showcase,  thrust  them  into 
the  safe,  and  slammed  the  door.  Now  he  felt  braver,  and  he 
faced  the  situation  like  a  conqueror  instead  of  a  victim. 

But  Joe  still  had  his  gun  in  one  hand.  He  brought  it  down 
now,  to  the  level  of  Nosswitz's  chest,  and  called  out  to  his 
invisible  menace  in  a  plucky  burlesque  of  her  dialect : 

*'  Mamma,  if  you  shoot  me,  I  shoot  Papa!" 

"Vait  vonce,  Mamma!"  cried  Nosswitz.  And  there  was 
a  pause,  a  general  stalemate. 

Joe  and  Kate  were  too  good  sports  not  to  respect  the  swift 
ness  of  the  pawnbroker's  action.  Joe  was  not  much  afraid 
of  the  marksmanship  of  the  concealed  woman,  but  it  would 
make  a  noise,  the  street  outside  was  crowded,  and  the  cab- 
driver  was  not  a  confederate,  simply  a  hasty  pick-up  whom 
Joe  had  told  to  drive  to  the  pawnshop  and  wait  while  he 
went  in  for  a  package,  and  then  drive  to  the  la^th  Street 
railroad  station  in  a  hurry. 

The  plan  had  looked  simple  in  the  flare  of  the  diamonds, 
and  far  cruder  plans  had  succeeded  again  and  again.  But 
now  the  jig  was  up. 

Yet  Nosswitz  felt  none  too  triumphant  with  Joe's  gun  at 
his  chest.  He  would  have  died  for  his  diamonds,  perhaps, 
and  gone  to  Gehenna  with  one  more  grievance.  But  he  was 
no  more  eager  for  the  police  than  Joe  was.  They  would 
seize  the  jewelry  themselves,  no  doubt,  and  he  would  be  as 
badly  off  as  if  he  had  let  the  thieves  take  it.  Nosswitz 
trusted  the  police  a  little  less  than  he  trusted  anybody  else. 

He  felt  that  it  was  an  excellent  time  for  an  armistice. 

330 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

Even  with  his  hands  in  air  again  he  gesticulated  with  the 
palms  inward  instead  of  forward  as  he  grinned  nervously. 

"Vat's  de  uset  of  such  a  shootink?  It's  unly  to  make 
nuisance  vit  police.  You  go  on  owid  kviet  und  I  dun't 
make  no  complaint,  so  averybody  is  sottisfite." 

Joe  was  reluctant  to  leave  empty-handed  and  defeated, 
but  the  mysterious  tone  of  Mrs.  Nosswitz  was  curdling: 

"Move  over,  lady,  vile  I  shoot  dot  chendleman!" 

Kate  moved  over  to  the  door,  and  Joe,  with  an  instinct  of 
comradeship,  moved  with  her..  He  let  her  out,  pointed  his 
gun  at  Nosswitz,  and  said: 

"Come  on  out  in  the  street!" 

Nosswitz  was  suspicious  of  the  invitation,  and  stood  fast 
long  enough  for  Joe  to  close  the  door,  slip  his  gun  back  into 
its  arm-holster,  hasten  to  the  cab,  and  tell  the  driver  to  beat 
it  to  the  deepot.  He  looked  at  his  watch  to  add  plausibility 
to  his  innocent  need  of  haste. 

The  cab  carried  two  of  the  most  frenziedly  indignant  pas 
sengers  that  ever  jounced  among  the  pillars  of  the  elevated. 
Kate  and  Joe  emitted  oaths  in  a  stream. 

One  thing  was  certain:  their  outraged  pride  would  not 
permit  them  to  leave  New  York  without  effacing  this  stain. 
They  devoted  themselves  to  getting  somebody's  diamonds. 

"There's  that  Taxta  necklace,"  Kate  moaned. 

Joe  nodded,  "We've  just  gotta  get  it." 

"  If  we  go  to  the  Chair  for  it,"  Kate  added.    Joe  renodded. 

They  got  out  at  the  railroad  station,  paid  the  cabby,  took 
a  local  train  to  13 8th  Street,  got  out,  and  returned  by  street 
car  to  Bob's  realm. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BOB  TAXTER  was  spared  that  "cold  gray  dawn  of  the 
morning  after"  of  which  Mr.  George  Ade's  Sultan  of 
Sulu  sang.  But  oh,  the  hot-red  afternoon ! 

The  policeman  angel  who  had  put  him  to  bed  had  done 
well  to  evade  a  fight  with  him,  for  that  old  fellow  with  the 
drunken  name,  Publilius  Syrus,  said  the  sober  truth  when  he 
said,  "The  absent  alone  he  harms  who  quarrels  with  the 
drunk." 

Robert  Taxter  the  Best  had  been  submerged  by  the  incom 
ing  tide,  and  the  worst  of  all  Robert  Taxters  had  ridden  the 
waves.  But  now  the  tide  was  on  the  ebb  and  the  best 
Robert  was  emerging  slowly,  and  drying  out  as  slowly  as  a 
soaked  sponge  left  on  the  rocks. 

For  hours  there  was  no  Taxter  at  home  at  all,  either  good 
or  bad — nobody  that  heard,  saw,  spoke,  stirred,  or  thought. 
A  sort  of  night-watchman  of  the  soul  breathed  in  a  sleep  below 
sleep.  The  telephone  bell  found  him  deaf;  the  light  from 
the  window  found  him  blind.  Acute  financial  and  spiritual 
crises  sat  outside  the  door  of  his  soulless  house  like  so  many 
bottles  of  milk  or  bags  of  buns. 

The  night  elevator-boy  (who  had  helped  the  policeman  in 
with  the  piece  of  dead  luggage  that  contained  the  residue  or 
germ  of  Bob)  had  used  a  pass-key  and  had  neglected  to 
report  the  affair  when  he  went  off  duty  in  the  morning. 
Consequently,  when  Bob's  distracted  mother,  having  heard 
nothing  from  him  all  night,  called  up  his  hotel  the  next  morn 
ing,  the  telephone-girl  rang  his  room,  but,  getting  no  response, 
consulted  the  desk-man,  who  glanced  at  Bob's  letter-box  and 
saw  his  key  there,  also  a  few  letters  (such  letters  as  every 
guests  at  a  hotel  receives). 

So  the  desk-man  told  the  telephone-girl: 

"He's  out." 

And  she  told  the  mother.  Mrs.  Taxter  left  a  message: 

332 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"  Please  leave  word  in  his  box  to  call  me  up  the  moment  he 
comes  in." 

The  telephone-girl  promised  glibly,  frnd  forgot  with 
equal  glibness. 

Half  an  hour  later  Mrs.  Taxter  called  again,  in  vain — and 
at  intervals  throughout  the  morning.  Once  or  twice  the 
telephone-girl  remembered  to  put  the  message  in  the  box. 
But  the  key  there  was  always  accepted  as  proof  that  Bob 
was  out. 

The  chambermaid  had  tried  the  door,  unlocked  it,  and 
taken  a  peek  inside.  Seeing  Bob  in  bed,  she  had  closed  and 
locked  the  door.  But  she  had  not  reported  to  the  office  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  guests  was  sleeping  late.  She  kept  an 
impatient  watch  on  the  door,  but  Bob  did  not  go  out. 

The  first  feelings  of  a  new-born  soul  will  probably  never  be 
recorded.  They  are  probably  chiefly  concerned  with  a  bad 
taste  in  the  mouth  calling  for  warm  milk. 

The  first  feelings  of  a  newly  sobered  soul  are  familiar: 
they  begin  similarly,  but  it  is  not  warm  milk  that  is  called 
for.  Ice-water!  The  soul  returning  to  its  ravaged  nest 
wails  for  ice-water — inside  and  out. 

Eventually  Bob  came  back  to  his  vacant  dwelling,  slowly, 
tormentedly,  twitching  at  this  muscle  and  that  like  a  line 
man  repairing  the  wires  after  a  storm.  It  would  have  been 
something  to  marvel  at  if  it  had  not  happened  so  often. 

The  only  thing  that  keeps  everyday  things  from  being 
incredible  is  their  recurrence.  The  only  difference  between 
a  miracle  and  a  custom  is  that  the  miracle  happens  only 
once  and  the  custom,  which  may  be  far  harder  to  explain, 
happens  all  the  time. 

Before  David  Warfield  became  the  master  of  tears  he 
played  a  Polish  Jew  in  the  old  Casino  reviews.  He  could  not 
understand  what  a  miracle  was.  Who  can?  But  then 
another  actor  tried  to  explain  it  by  illustration  in  some  such 
words  as  these: 

"Suppose  a  man  fell  out  of  a  third-story  window  and 
lighted  safely  without  breaking  a  bone,  vrhat  would  that  be?" 

"A  accident/' 

"Yes,  it  might  be;  but  if  the  same  thing  happened  a 
second  time?" 

"Anudder  excident,  yet." 

333 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"Well,  all  right!    But  if  he  did  it  a  third  time—" 

"Dot  vould  be  a  hebbit." 

So  any  man  might  fall  out  of  the  window  of  sobriety  once, 
by  accident ;  and  a  second  time,  perhaps ;  but  to  jump  out  of 
the  window  a  third  time!  We  call  it  a  habit,  but  it  is  the 
strangest  of  miracles. 

This  was  not  the  first  time  Bob  Taxter  had  jumped  off  the 
roof.  He  had  always  been  bruised  throughout  in  body  and 
soul,  and  always  was  as  much  amazed  as  he  was  remorse- 
ridden  and  earnest  in  resolutions.  He  had  always  been  as 
sick  as  if  his  stomach  were  trying  to  crawl  up  his  esophagus 
and  turn  itself  inside  out.  Every  nerve  was  an  incandescent 
wire,  every  sense  ablaze  and  indignant.  Every  motion  was 
repentant,  humbled,  despondent,  ashamed  to  such  a  degree 
that  nobody  except  himself  could  be  pitiless  toward  him. 

Yet  at  the  first  derangement  of  his  plans  he  ran  back  to 
the  roof  and  launched  himself  wildly  into  the  alcoholic  ether. 

This  time,  as  always,  he  swung  his  clanging  head  with  the 
dolor  of  a  throbbing  bell  in  a  high  spire  as  he  registered  his 
usual  solemn  adjuration,  "Nevermore!" 

And  this  was  indeed  his  last  spree — in  this  book.  After 
its  finish  this  record  will  have  to  abandon  him  to  his  future 
(with  grave  misgivings). 

This  day  had  trouble  enough  of  its  own,  and  a  redundancy. 
The  Prohibition  law  renders  a  full  description  of  Bob's 
miseries  already  prehistoric — as  unimportant  to  the  innocent 
future  as  an  account  of  the  indigestions  of  a  tyrannosaurus 
or  the  emotions  of  a  dodo.  A  year  or  so  from  now  no  doubt 
the  Americans  will  wonder  at  drunkenness  as  much  as  at 
witch-burning,  and  with  as  good  reason. 

There  was  a  man  who  came  through  the  horrors  of  the 
Titanic 's  collision  with  the  iceberg,  and  all  he  could  say  of  it 
was,  "Oh,  it  was  terrible!" 

Let  that  brief  epitaph  suffice  for  the  hours  of  travail  that 
resulted  in  the  again-borning  of  Robert  Taxter. 

When  he  came  at  last  into  a  state  of  renaissance  where  he 
could  think  of  something  besides  his  nausea  and  his  gratitude 
for  the  invention  of  ice-water  and  ice  poultices ;  when  he  came 
next  out  of  the  dark  valley  of  repentance  and  groveling  desire 
for  death  by  suicide  or  by  well-earned  legal  process,  he  grew 
acutely  aware  of  a  number  of  things. 

334 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

His  world  was  so  full  of  such  numbers  of  things  that  he 
was  surely  as  sorely  unhappy  as  kings.  He  had  an  adum 
bration  of  his  infamous  misconduct  in  the  restaurant  before 
the  eyes  of  his  best  beloved  and  various  others.  This  gave 
him  a  period  of  mental  nausea  and  violent  spiritual  retching. 
His  scrimmage  with  the  waiters  which  his  vinous  self  had 
celebrated  as  a  sort  of  Miltonian  battle  with  fiends  seemed 
now  a  degrading  exhibition  of  idiocy  in  which  he  had  not 
only  lowered  himself  to  a  contest  with  menials,  but  had  gone 
on  down  to  defeat. 

He  resolved  that  he  would  never  show  his  Cain-branded 
face  in  that  restaurant  again.  Indeed,  he  cut  all  of  Broad 
way  off  his  map.  The  entire  district  through  which  he  had 
ranged  he  erased  as  a  future  terra  interdicta.  He  himself 
was  interdictus  aqua  el  igni,  especially  in  the  combination 
known  as  fire-water. 

As  for  April,  of  course  he  would  never  dare  appear  before 
her  again. 

Then  he  thought  of  his  mother.  He  realized  that  he  had 
promised  to  telephone  her  the  moment  he  knew  his  plans. 
As  if  he  had  not  butchered  her  poor  heart  enough  the  day 
before,  he  had  starved  it  to  death  for  news.  He  could  imagine 
all  too  well  how  she  must  have  been  frenzied  with  anxieties. 

The  one  thing  he  could  do  was  to  telephone  her  that  he 
was  alive  and  unmarried  still,  but  that  he  would  not  be 
the  former  for  long.  A  decent  suicide  would  be  his  one 
atonement. 

His  mother  would  suffer  bitterly  at  first,  but  she  would 
get  over  it  gradually  and  he  would  become  a  somber  memory, 
a  tender  thought.  That  would  be  better  than  going  on  from 
disgrace  to  disgrace  and  continually  piercing  her  soul  with 
terrors  and  regrets. 

Next  he  understood  that  he  was  a  pauper.  His  ten  thou 
sand  dollars  was  gone,  his  extra  money  was  gone,  and  he  had 
nothing  but  debts. 

No  priest  ever  devised  penances  more  fierce  than  a  nature 
like  Bob's  conceives  and  administers  to  its  own  soul  in  the 
first  hours  after  an  outbreak  like  his.  Such  self-vilification 
and  self-castigation  would  seem  to  be  almost  adequate  as  a 
price  for  absolution. 

But  automatically,  being  a  big,  healthy  brute,  Bob's  body 

335 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

threw  off  the  poisonous  acids  and  his  mind  condensed  the 
black  fogs  and  cleared  his  sky. 

Like  a  very  modern  Prodigal,  at  last  he  lifted  himself  from 
his  husks  and  said,  "I  will  arise  and  telephone  my  mother." 

When  the  miraculous  wire  thrilled  with  her  cry  of  rapture 
at  hearing  his  voice  he  felt  glad  that  he  had  deferred  suicide. 
He  felt  that  his  suicide  was  adjourned  sine  die. 

He  could  tell  by  her  laughter  that  she  was  weeping.  He 
could  almost  hear  her  tears  patter;  tears  sparkled  in  his  own 
handsome  eyes  as  he  realized  how  precious  his  mother  and  he 
were  to  each  other. 

She  begged  him  to  come  to  her  at  once  from  wherever  he 
was.  She  had,  as  it  were,  fallen  on  his  neck  while  yet  a 
great  way  off.  Her  welcome  was  so  fervent  that  Bob  laughed 
even  when  he  confessed : 

"I  can't.  I'm  busted  higher  than  a  kite.  I  haven't  got 
a  cent,  mamma!"  That  old  boyhood  word  had  slipped  into 
place  on  account  of  his  childish  poverty.  He  heard  his 
mother  gurgle  with  pride.  It  brought  her  back  by  a  kind  of 
witchery  to  twenty-five  again. 

"I've  got  lots  of  money,"  she  giggled.  "And  I'll  come 
right  down  and  take  you  out  of  pawn,  my  blessed  angel!" 

"Well,  hurry  up,"  he  shouted,  "for  I'm  hungry." 

"I'm  on  my  way  this  minute,  honey.  But — oh,  one  thing. 
You're  not  married,  are  you?" 

"  No!    And  I  ain't  never  goin'  to  be!" 

' '  Oh,  glory  hallelujah !    Good-by !" 

How  beautiful  are  the  feet  of  them  that  bring  glad  tidings — 
and  tidings-over! 


CHAPTER  VII 

IT  occurred  to  Bob  that  he  had  just  time  enough  to  get 
dressed  before  his  mother  reached  the  Deucalion.     Next 
it  occurred  to  him  that  while  he  had  just  time  enough,  he  had 
just  no  clothes  at  all. 

His  evening  clothes  were  as  Officer  Twomey  had  left  them. 
Twomey  had  felt  neither  the  obligation  nor  the  ability  to 
play  valet  with  the  evening  clothes  of  his  ward.  He  had 
flung  them  over  a  chair  and  left  them. 

Folding  them  up  would  have  done  them  no  good. 

Bob's  brain  was  trying  to  make  up  for  lost  time.  He 
called  for  the  porter  and  told  him  his  plight : 

'  You  sent  my  trunk  to  the  station  yesterday?" 
'Yah,  the  Gran'  Centerl." 

'But  I  said  the  Pennsylvania." 

'Your  coon  said  the  Gran'  Centerl." 
'My  coon!    The  black  thief  stole  my  money  and  carried 
off  the  claim-check  and — what  can  I  do?" 

"I  might  get  it  back  for  you  from  the  baggage-man  up 
there.  I  got  a  record  of  the  number,  and  I  guess  maybe — it 
might  take  a  little  money,  but — " 

Bob  answered  promptly:  "Oh,  I'll  make  it  all  right  with 
you — as  soon  as  I  get  it.  You  get  the  trunk,  no  matter  what 
it  costs." 

Bob  had  not  so  much  as  a  quarter  for  a  tip,  but  a  saving 
cashier  was  on  the  way. 

The  porter  nodded  and  went  his  way. 

Bob  put  on  his  bathrobe  and  decided  that  the  only  thing 
to  do  was  to  tell  his  mother  everything.  It  is  one  of  the 
rarest  and  sanest  decisions  that  men  arrive  at. 

His  mother  dawned  at  last  and  brought  with  her  not  only 
funds,  but  an  inexhaustible  treasure  of  sympathy,  under 
standing,  and,  what  he  needed  most  of  all,  admiration. 

To  hear  her  talk,  one  might  have  thought  that  she  be- 

337 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

lieved  his  spree  an  act  of  inspired  wisdom  and  nobility,  for 
when  he  tried  to  admit  thai  it  was  imbecile,  criminal,  un 
pardonable,  irretrievable,  and  all  that  sort  of  -le,  -al,  and  -ilc, 
she  kept  crying:  "Not  at  all!  I  don't  wonder!  I  don't 
blame  you !  Who  wouldn't,  with  what  you  had  endured  ?" — 
and  all  that  sort  of  mother-chatter. 

She  was  too  wise  as  well  as  too  fond  to  attempt  any  moral 
rebukes,  preachments,  or  high  ideals.  She  fed  him  what  he 
was  famished  for,  not  what  he  had  already  choked  himself 
with. 

And  so  by  the  time  his  trunk  had  really  come  and  he  had 
paid  the  porter  liberally  out  of  his  mother's  money  and  he 
had  unpacked  a  complete  outfit  of  clean  and  normal  clothes 
and  got  into  them,  he  had  put  on  a  new,  fresh  mind  also. 
The  man  inside  the  underwear  was  as  good  a  man  as  ever  he 
was.  He  had  courage,  hope,  ambition — and  he  even  put  on 
his  mind  a  topper  of  defiance  like  a  cocked  hat. 

He  was  so  re-established  as  the  old  intractable  Bob  that 
when  his  mother  felt  reckless  enough  to  say,  "And  now 
you've  got  to  go  right  ova  to  April  and  make  up  with  her," 
Bob  went  straight  up  into  the  air  like  one  of  the  new  heli 
copters  with  no  preliminary  take-off  and  spiral. 

"Not  in  a  thousand  years,  mother,"  he  said,  already  back 
from  "mamma!"  to  "mother."  He  laughed  cynically: 

"In  the  first  place,  she  wouldn't  speak  to  me  if  I  did." 

"You're  goin'  to  dew  just  what  youah  motha  tells  you  for 
this  once  or  I  won't  give  you  one  single  solitary  cent  of 
money.  But  I'll  tell  you  what  I  will  do,  Mista  Robert  Taxta ! 
I'll  take  you  right  across  ma  knee  this  ve'y  minute  and  give 
you  the  wust  spankin'  ewa  you  had  in  all  youah  bawn 
days." 

He  looked  at  her  sheepishly.  She  looked  as  if  she  meant 
it.  If  she  tried  it,  how  could  he  resist  her?  He  simply  had 
to  obey.  He  did  it  with  as  little  grace  as  possible. 

"All  right,  I'll  obey  you,  because  I've  got  to.  You've 
been  mighty  sweet  and  you've  got  all  the  money.  But 
you'll  be  sorry  for  this  the  longest  day  you  live." 

"Then  I'll  be  sah'y  for  it,  but  I'm  goin'  threw  with  it." 

"All  right.     Come  along." 

Bob  mopped  his  brow.  The  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
stopped  with  the  banquet.  It  did  not  go  on  to  tell  what  the 

338 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

neighbors  did  to  the  young  man  the  next  day  or  how  he 
made  up  with  the  girl  he  left  behind  him. 

It  was  enough  for  the  Prodigal's  parents  that  the  dead 
was  alive  again  and  the  lost  found,  but  that  girl  surely  in 
sisted  on  knowing  just  what  he  did  while  he  was  lost  and  with 
just  whom  he  wasted  his  substance  with  riotous  living. 

That  is  where  the  beauty  and  the  poetry  die  out  and  the 
humdrum  prose  begins.  And  April  could  be  counted  on  to 
make  the  humdrum  hum. 

No  one  knew  this  better  than  Bob  Taxter,  and  he  did  not 
want  to  be  the  drum  for  April  to  play.  He  was  feeling  too 
much  like  a  drum  that  had  been  left  out  in  the  rain.  His 
skin  was  too  taut  around  him,  and  every  tap  made  his  head 
reverberate. 

He  sank  back  into  his  chair  and  said: 

"I'll  take  the  spanking.  I'd  rather  take  one  from  you 
than  what  April  will  give  me.  I'm  in  no  mood  for  a  row,  and 
I  just  couldn't  put  up  a  fight.  I  fought  all  New  York  last 
night,  and  all  the  liquor  in  the  world,  and — well,  I'm  just 
about  ready  to  retire  on  my  laurels." 

His  mother  saw  that  he  was  really  unfit  for  attack,  defense, 
or  negotiations.  She  gave  him  further  love  and  courage  and 
devotion,  like  very  milk  from  her  full  breast.  And  then  she 
decided  to  fight  his  battle  for  him  once  more,  as  she  had  done 
when  he  was  only  a  tiny  codger  and  ran  to  her  for  protection 
f  row  the  big  mischief  he  had  started  and  could  not  handle. 

"I'll  tell  you  what,  honey!  I'll  go  there  first  and  make  all 
the  explauations  and  smooth  the  way.  Then  you  come  along 
a  little  lata,  and — " 

Bob  shook  his  head:  "Go  if  you  want  to,  but  I'll  wait  till 
you  telephone  that  the  coast  is  clear  and  the  war  is  over." 

She  smiled  and  went  her  way,  while  he  slumped  in  a  chair 
and  leaned  across  the  window-ledge,  musing  upon  the  thou 
sands  of  roofs  and  the  streets,  and  the  people  in  them,  as 
mysterious  as  the  sky  over  them. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A^RIL  ordinarily  had  no  more  than  an  academic  interest 
in  the  morning  papers,  but  after  Bob's  invasion  of  the 
restaurant,  her  futile  effort  to  rewrite  his  character,  and  the 
grand  smash  of  his  exit,  she  fell  asleep  in  hopeless  confusion, 
only  to  wake  very  early  and  wonder  if  Bob  were  in  the 
news. 

Springing  from  her  bed  like  another  rhododactyled  Heos, 
and  almost  as  lightly  clad,  she  limped  down-stairs  with  one 
slipper  off  and  one  slipper  on,  hobbled  to  the  front  door,  and 
snatched  the  morning  paper  in  from  the  sill,  and  searched  it 
to  see  if  those  dramatic  critics,  the  police,  had  cast  Bob  for 
a  prominent  r61e. 

All  the  world's  a  stage,  as  somebody  has  said,  but  we  all 
try  to  be  more  than  merely  players;  we  try  to  be  managers 
and  dramatists  of  our  own  lives  and  of  others',  and  of  life 
itself.  And  we  run  a  gantlet  of  critics  before  The  Critic 
puts  on  the  mark  of  failure  or  success  that  makes  all  other 
critiques  vain. 

Lo,  the  poor  playwright,  who,  having  agonized  through  the 
first  performance,  rises  betimes  to  find  what  those  matutinal 
deities,  the  morning-paper  critics,  have  done  to  him;  and 
having  survived  that  drum-fire,  hopes  or  fears  the  barrage 
of  the  afternoon  papers;  and  after  that  the  weeklies,  the 
monthlies,  the  quarterlies,  and  finally  the  annual  reviews — 
these  last  often  finding  him  dead  or  established,  and  either- 
wise  immune. 

April's  search  for  dramatic  notices  of  Bob  was  as  vain  as 
Zeb's  for  himself.  Unwittingly,  they  agreed  that  since  th« 
war  the  front  page  had  been  very  stupid. 

The  whole  morning  long  April  fretted,  refusing  to  se« 
Walter  Reece,  or  Claudia,  or  Hugo  Clyde,  all  of  whom  called 
up  and  were  put  off. 

She  dabbled  at  her  statuary,  and  decided  that  sculpture 

340 


SHE   DECIDED  THAT   SCULPTURE    WAS    NOT   FOR   HER 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

was  not  for  her.  She  would  take  up  tatting  and  get  a  parrot 
and  a  cat  and  go  old-maiding  to  her  grave,  which  she  hoped 
was  not  far  off. 

She  made  Pansy  call  up  the  Deucalion  and  inquire  for  Bob. 
The  report  was  that  he  had  went  out  the  night  before  and 
had  not  came  back  as  yet.  This  left  the  whole,  wide  world 
of  possibilities  wide  open. 

The  afternoon  papers  might  have  something.  His  climax 
might  have  been  reached  too  late  for  the  morning  editions. 
She  sent  Pansy  out  for  the  extras,  and  Pansy  fetched  them 
the  more  eagerly  since  she  wanted  to  know  if  Zeb  had  bust 
into  print.  She  asked  April  to  search,  and  the  search  was 
equally  bootless.  Both  of  their  so  differently  unsatisfactory 
men-folk  were  still  unknown  to  fame. 

Mrs.  Summerlin,  to  avoid  going  mad  in  trio,  set  Pansy  to 
sifting  the  last  winter's  ashes  in  the  hearth  once  more,  in  the 
thought  that  Bob's  money  might  have  blown  there. 

The  word  "ashes"  reminded  April  of  an  old  song  of  love 
fordone,  and  she  sat  at  the  piano,  groping  for  the  accom 
paniment  and  the  tune  of  "Ashes  of  Roses."  As  she  neither 
played  nor  sang,  the  result  drove  her  mother  frantic. 

Pansy,  squat  on  her  knees  at  the  fireplace,  catching  the 
words  that  April  mauled,  sniffed: 

"'Ashes  of  roses,'  humph!  They  ain't  no  mo'  use  than 
what  ashes  of  greenbacks  is." 

April  groaned:  "Poor  Bob!  I  suppose  he's  fallen  in  the 
river,  or  been  run  over  by  a  truck,  or  something.  He  won't 
need  his  poor  five  thousand;  and  our  money  is  no  good  to  us, 
either — two  lonely  widows." 

"Three  widdas,"  Pansy  almost  sighed.  "I  done  lose  ma 
Zeb  again;  eitha  he's  boun'  for  the  Nawth  Pole  or  the  jail- 
house.  I'll  newa  see  him  no  mo'!  Po'  ole  Zeb!" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  sank  to  a  divan : 

"Three  wise  women  stranded  on  a  desert  island,  with 
nothin'  to  spend  but  a  hundad  thousan'  dolla's,  and  no  place 
to  spend  it." 

"Betta  spen'  it  buyin'  a  nice  husban'  for  Miss  April.  I 
don't  know  nothin'  awfulla  than  just  women-folks  settin* 
roun'.  Sometimes  I  reckon  the  Lawd  made  min  to  keep  the 
women  comp'ny  'stead  of  th'  otha  way  roun'." 

"Oh,  Pansy,  hush  up,  for  Heaven's  sake!" 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"  Yassum!  If  I  git  back  to  ma  dishes,  they'll  be  only  me 
in  the  kitchen,  and  I  won't  be  so  lonesome." 

As  she  got  to  her  feet,  the  telephone  bell  rang  and  she 
answered  it. 

"  Is  who  in?  Did  you  say  Miss  Summalin  or  Miz  Summa- 
lin?  Oh!  And  who's  you,  please?  Oh!"  She  turned  to 
Mrs.  Summerlin: 

"It's  Mistoo  Kellogg.     Is  you  in?" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  started  to  say,  Yes  but  April  said,  firmly, 
but  gently,  "No,  mother,  you're  not  in!" 

"But  he— " 

"No,  mother.     No,  Pansy,  she's  not  in." 

Pansy  made  a  face  of  despair  and  repeated  the  message 
into  the  wall,  only  to  turn  back.  "He  say,  when  will  you 
be  in?" 

"Never!"  said  April.  "Oh,  tell  him  to-morrow.  We'll 
all  be  dead  by  then,  I  hope." 

"To-morra,  please,"  said  Pansy  to  the  astonished  tele 
phone,  and  hung  up.  She  glared  at  her  unruly  wards.  "I 
wisht  you  chillun  would  tell  yo'  own  stories.  I  got  enough 
o'  ma  own  to  tell.  It's  gittin'  so  I'm  ashame'  to  go  to  chu'ch 
any  mo'.  Whyn't  you  try  goin'  to  meetin'?" 

April  broke  down.    "Oh,  if  I  could  only  have  a  good  cry!" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  ran  to  her.  "Don't,  don't  cry,  whatever 
you  do.  I  can't  stand  that." 

Pansy  pushed  her  aside.  "Go  on  away  and  leave  ma  baby 
cry."  She  gathered  April  in  her  arms.  "  Put  on  yo'  rubbas, 
honey,  and  let  the  delooge  come." 

April  tears  would  not  run  at  command,  but  her  mother, 
suddenly  realizing  the  girl's  true  anguish,  fell  into  a  chair 
and  wept  bitterly.  Pansy  stood  distraught  between  the 
two.  But  April  ran  to  her  mother,  knelt  by  her,  and  took  her 
white  head  on  her  young  shoulder  and  said: 

"Poor  mamma  has  all  her  own  troubles  and  all  of  mine. 
It's  time  I  was  carrying  them  both.  Don't,  mamma! 
Don't,  sweetheart !  If  you  don't  stop,  I'll  die !" 

So  her  mother  strangled  back  her  sobs  and  the  two  clung 
together. 

It  was  thus  that  Mrs.  Taxter  found  them  when  she  arrived 
as  the  courier  of  Bob.  Pansy  let  her  in  under  protest: 

"Oh,  ma  Gord!  mo'  women!" 

342 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

But  Mrs.  Taxter  hurried  to  the  two  forlorn  castaways  with 
the  marvelous  news: 

"Bob!  Bob's  found!  I've  found  Bobbie!  He's  all 
right!  Everything  is  all  right!" 

April  had  many  questions  to  ask,  but  they  were  not  such 
as  could  well  be  put  to  Bob's  mother.  All  she  could  say  was : 

"Where  did  you  find  him?" 

"In  his  rooms.  He  called  me  up,  and  I  went  to  see  him, 
and  he — he's  te'bly  sah-y  for  everything,  but  he's  alive  and 
well  and — he  isn't  ma'ied  to  that  adventuress,  and  he  isn't 
goin'  to  ma'y  her.  I  begged  him  to  come  with  me,  but  he 
wouldn't — at  least  he  wouldn't  until  I  told  him  I'd  whip 
him  if  he  didn't,  and  then  he  said  he'd  come  only  on  condition 
that  you'd  forgive  him." 

Now  that  April  was  asked  for  the  forgiveness  she  had  sworn 
never  to  grant  even  in  the  impossible  case  of  its  being  asked, 
she  fled  to  Mrs.  Taxter's  arms  with  a  wild  keen,  and,  clinging 
there,  wept  and  wept  and  wept. 

Mrs.  Taxter  embraced  her,  but  stared  down  at  her  in 
amazement : 

"What  is  she  sah-y  about  now?" 

Pansy  growled:  "Don't  you  know  nothin'?  She's  so 
happy  she's  havin'  a  celeb'ation."  She  patted  April's  tur 
bulent  shoulder-blades.  "Go  on,  honey,  let  the  rain  po'!" 

This,  of  course,  checked  it  instanter,  and  April  began 
rubbing  her  eyes  and  cheeks  with  shamefaced  vigor. 

"The  only  trouble,"  Mrs.  Taxter  said,  "is  that  those 
awful  Yahmys  got  away  with  the  Taxta  necklace,  and  that 
unspeakable  nigro,  Zeb,  got  away  with  every  cent  of  Bob's 
inhe'itance.  Of  co'se,  I  don't  care  who  got  what,  so  long  as 
ma  boy  is  free,  but  Bob  is  crushed.  You'll  see  him,  though, 
won't  you?  Even  if  he  is  penniless  and  penitent — oh,  so 
penitent!" 

April  ran  to  the  telephone,  but  hesitated  before  it  in 
embarrassment,  as  if  Bob  himself  were  inside  it,  as  his  voice 
would  be  the  moment  after  she  got  his  number. 

"You  call  him,"  she  said  to  Mrs.  Taxter,  shyly,  and  Mrs. 
Taxter  caressed  her  as  she  passed. 

23 


CHAPTER  IX 

GETTING  telephone-girls  in  those  post-war  days  was  so 
difficult  that  getting  telephone  numbers  came  to  be  a 
test  of  nerves  and  endurance.  The  luxury  of  lifting  a  piece 
of  rubber  from  a  hook  and  commanding  immediately  the 
attention  of  a  person  miles  away  had  come  to  be  so  much  a 
matter  of  course  that  seconds  became  minutes  and  minutes 
hours.  To  wait  seven  minutes  for  a  connection  with  some 
one  whom  it  would  take  half  an  hour  to  reach  by  taxicab  was 
considered  an  almost  intolerable  hardship.  People  grew  so 
frantic  that  the  Board  of  Health  actually  threatened  to  in 
tervene  in  defense  of  the  public  sanity. 

Mrs.  Taxter  had  not  been  in  New  York  long  enough  to  go 
mad  over  a  few  minutes  of  leisure  spent  in  leaning  against 
the  wall  and  waiting  for  a  miracle.  She  was  perusing 
April's  beauty  with  an  affectionate  smile,  almost  purring 
with  contentment. 

In  the  meantime  Pansy  heard  the  kitchen  bell  ring  and 
went  to  answer  it. 

No  one  else  heard  her  gasp  as  Zeb  pushed  through  the 
door  with  his  vacuum-cleaner  container  in  his  left  arm. 

He  held  his  right  arm  before  him  to  receive  the  blow  he 
expected  Pansy  to  deal  him.  A  little  of  the  rapture  in  her 
heart  escaped  in  her  first  cry,  "Zeb!"  but  she  throttled  the 
humiliating  confession  of  affection  and  became  the  shrew  she 
affected  to  be: 

"So  you  come  sneakin'  back,  did  you?" 

"  Yassum,"  Zeb  mumbled. 

"Is  the  police  ain't  find  you  yet?" 

"No'm." 

"Well,  what  you  want  roun'  yere,  you  shif'less  scoun'rel; 
you  dog  what  kills  his  own  masta's  own  chickens?  Couldn't 
you  find  nobody  else's  money  to  steal  'cept  hisn?  Where-all 
you  been  at,  anyhow?" 

344 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"Oh,  I  been  ridin*  round  in  a  old  horse  and  hack  I  found, 
and  I  been  hidin'  out  up  in  a  Hundad  and  Thutty-thud 
Street." 

"And  now  you  come  down  yere  lookin'  to  me  to  look  afta 
you?" 

"No'm!    I'm  come  for  to  see  Miss  April." 

"You  think  I'm  goin'  to  let  you  see  her  so's  you  can  steal 
our-alTs  money,  tew?" 

"  I  'ain't  steal  nobody's  nothin*.  Ef  you  don't  tell  her,  I'll 
walk  you  down.  Nobody  can't  keep  me  from  seein'  my  Miss 
April,  and  you  betta  don't  try." 

Pansy  stood  wondering  at  his  new  manner  of  autocracy. 
It  was  as  becoming  to  Zeb  as  a  new  suit,  and  it  did  not 
consist  with  her  theory  that  he  was  guilty  of  a  treason. 

By  this  time,  having  secured  Bob's  promise  to  come  at 
once,  Mrs.  Taxter  was  saying: 

"Bob  would  be  all  right  if  he  could  only  find  that  villain 
of  a  darky." 

"What  on  earth  could  have-made  Zeb  do  such  a  thing?" 
April  wondered.  "He  seemed  such  a  nice  old  man,  and  he 
wanted  to  live  with  Bob  forever." 

"But  Bob  had  discharged  him  before  he  stole  the  money. 
I  suppose  he  thought  he  would  make  off  with  it  since  he 
couldn't  expect  any  more  wages." 

April  was  in  trouble  again.  "Bob  discharged  Zeb?    Why?" 

"Because  he  prevented  him  from  getting  dressed;  stuffed 
all  his  clothes  in  a  trunk  and  sent  them  away  so  Bob  couldn't 
get  married." 

"Bob  discharged  Zeb  for  making  him  miss  the  wedding!" 
April  moaned.  "That  means  that  Bob  wanted  to  marry 
that  woman !  If  it  hadn't  been  for  Zeb,  he'd  have  been  her 
husband  now." 

"No,  no,  honey;  not  at  all,"  Mrs.  Taxter  protested,  yet 
she  was  disconcerted  by  this  unconsidered  aspect  of  the 
case. 

"What  else  could  it  mean?"  April  demanded. 

As  Mrs.  Taxter  wrung  her  wits  for  an  explanation,  dreading 
that  Bob  would  walk  into  a  war  in  spite  of  all  her  diplomacy, 
-  Pansy  appeared  in  the  doorway. 

"  Miss  April,  they's  a  ole  nigga  ote  yere  what  says  he  wants 
to  see  you.  It's  Zeb." 

345     < 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"  Zeb  isn't  here !"  Mrs.  Taxter  gasped.  "  Notify  the  police 
at  once!" 

Pansy  nodded  to  Mrs.  Taxter,  but  spoke  to  April: 

"He's  pow'ful  anxious  to  get  a  word  with  you  fust,  Miss 
April." 

April  was  feeling  rather  pleasantly  prejudiced  toward  Zeb 
since  he  had  interfered  in  the  marriage  arrangements,  but 
Mrs.  Taxter  did  the  talking: 

"I'll  see  him,  if  only  for  the  pleasure  of  telling  him  he  ought 
to  be  whipped.  And  you  run  out  and  get  the  police,  Pansy. " 

"Yassum,"  said  Pansy,  but  she  did  not  run.  She  stood 
by  to  see  what  happened  after  she  motioned  Zeb  to  appear. 

He  lumbered  in,  always  toting  his  vacuum-cleaner  con 
tainer.  He  was  very  ingratiating  in  manner,  but  evidently 
terrified: 

"Howdy,  Miz  Summalin;  howdy,  Miss  April;  howdy, 
howdy —  Oh,  and  Miss  Lee!  Miss  Lee,  I  been  lookin'  for 
you.  I  got  a  very  important  c-communicatium  for  you.  It's 
about  yo'  boy,  Masta  Bob.  You  better  take  holt  of  dat 
limb  o'  Satan  and  straighten  him  out.  Does  you  know — 
o'  course  when  I  say  'does  you  know'  I  knows  you  don't 
know,  but  does  you  know  dat  young  gemman  ordered  me  out 
of  his  rooms?" 

"Out  of  his  rooms!  Didn't  he  tell  you  he  had  discharged 
you?" 

"Yassum,  thass  what  he  done  tol'  me.  Thass  what  I 
wanter  tell  you  to  tell  him  not  to.  He  don't  seem  to  realize 
he  cain't  fire  me." 

' '  What  ?    He  can't— you  say  he  can't !" 

"No'm,  he  cannot.  I  belonged  to  his  gran'pappy's  place 
befo'  he  was  bawn,  or  his  pappy,  either.  As  fur  as  dat  goes, 
I  used  to  dandle  his  daddy  on  ma  knee  befo'  you  was  bawn, 
Miss  Lee.  Old  Masta  Bob  uster  say  to  young  Masta  Bob's 
daddy,  'You  do  what  Zeb  tells  you  or  I'll  larrup  you  ma- 
seff.'  But  these  young  colts  comes  up  Nawth  and  gits 
Nawtheren  notions,  an' — " 

Mrs.  Taxter  broke  in  furiously,  her  amazement  lowering 
her  to  argument: 

"You're  the  one  that's  been  up  Nawth  too  long.  If  your 
old  Masta  Bob  had  you  down  there,  he'd  have  had  you 
whipped." 

346 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

Zeb  glugged  with  laughter,  like  a  bottle  upside  down. 
"Oh,  I  don't  mind  dat  none,  Miss  Lee.  Whippin'  never 
hurt  a  nigga  much,  I  reckon.  It  was  paht  of  de  pie.  You 
could  always  whip  a  nigga,  but  you  couldn't  fire  a  nigga. 
'Case  why:  they  wasn't  no  place  to  fire  him  to.  I  wisht 
you'd  explain  that  to  yo'  boy,  and  tell  him  he's  got  to  take 
me  back." 

"Did  any  one  ever  hear  of  such  insolence?"  Mrs.  Taxter 
cried. 

"Yassum.  Masta  Bob  suttainly  was  purty  insolence." 
Zeb  laughed  with  a  lofty  benignity.  "And  one  mo'  thing. 
You  tell  him  he  ought  to  call  me  Uncle  Zeb  and  show  his 
respect  for  me.  I  left  the  South  when  I  was  too  young  to  be 
called  Uncle,  but  I'm  hankerin'  afta  it  now.  I  got  a  right  to 
my  title  now,  same's  anybody." 

"'Uncle'?  He'll  uncle  you!  Why,  you  talk  like  the 
Nawthernest  darky  I  ever  heard  of." 

"Call  me  anythin'  yo1  tongue  can  lay  hands  on,  Miss  Lee, 
but  hahd  wuds  can't  make  no  Nawtherna  out  o'  me.  Masta 
Bob  tried  to  make  a  Texas  Southerna  out  o'  me,  but  he 
didn't  have  no  success.  I'm  Virginia,  I  am!" 

"Look  at  him!  He's  laughing!"  Mrs.  Taxter  fumed. 
"Mary,  order  him  out.  No,  wait  for  the  police!" 

"Police!"  Zeb  gasped.  "What  de  police  gotta  do  wit*  a 
family  matta?" 

"Family!  Perhaps  that  five  thousand  dolla's  you  stole 
was  a  family  matter?" 

"Me?  I  newa  stole  no  five  thousand  dolla's,  Miss  Lee, 
askin'  yo'  pahdon,  please,  for  cont'adictin'  you." 

"You  deny  that  you  stole  five  thousand  dollars  from  my 
son?  Why  don't  the  police  come?" 

"No'm.  I  newa  stole  a  one  cent  from  him.  I  took  ten 
thousand  dolla's." 

Mrs.  Taxter  was  almost  suffocated  by  this  astonishment. 
April  and  Mrs.  Summerlin  also  jumped  at  the  word  "ten." 

"Did  you  take  both  five-thousands?"  April  cried. 

"Yes,  Missy.  But  us  Taxtas  don't  steal  from  Taxtas. 
No'm.  I  got  it  all  right  yere,  and  I'm  mighty  good  and 
tired  of  it.  I  'ain't  had  much  sleep  sence  I  had  that  money 
on  me." 

"So  you're  the  ghost  that  took  the  first  five  thousand?" 

347 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Zeb  laughed.  "Yassum,  I'm  a  ghos'.  And  I  ain't  no 
happier  'n  what  ghostses  usurally  is.  I  been  mighty  much 
troubled  about  that  young  masta  I  done  took  on.  He's 
been  sech  a  power  of  trouble,  Miss  Lee,  I  wonda  you  erra 
raised  him.  What  we-all  goin'  do  wit'  him  from  now  on?" 

This  tone  was  naturally  not  one  to  be  encouraged.  Even 
Mrs.  Summerlin  rebuked  it: 

"You  ungrateful  wretch!  To  give  us  all  such  a  scare. 
And  Mista  Bob  took  you  in  and  was  kind  to  you,  and  you 
treated  him — simply  outrageously." 

"You'd  better  not  let  him  see  you,"  Mrs.  Taxter  added. 
"He'll  never  forgive  you  for  humiliating  him  so.  I  don't 
suppose  he'll  have  you  arrested  now.  But  you'd  better  give 
me  his  money  and  get  away  before  he  comes  here  and  finds 
you." 

Zeb  was  dazed  at  this  inconceivable  event.  "You  mean 
he  wouldn't  want  me  aroun'  no  mo'  ?" 

"  Of  course  not.  You  disobeyed  every  order  he  gave  you. 
You  stole  money  from  him  twice." 

"I  had  ma  reasons,  Miss  Lee;  and  good  ones  they  was." 

"But  your  reasons  aren't  his.  You  must  know  that. 
It's  too  bad  you  lost  such  a  nice  chance,  but  Mista  Bob 
would  never  trust  you  again." 

This  appalling  determination  to  misunderstand  his  devo 
tion  shattered  Zeb's  faith  in  humanity,  even  in  the  Taxters. 
He  bowed  to  the  bludgeon,  set  down  the  container,  and 
muttered: 

"Well,  I'll  git  out  the  money,  then  I'll  git  out  maseff.  I 
reckon  I'm  a  gone  coon." 

And  then  Pansy  exploded.  She  went  off  like  a  heap  of 
fireworks  ignited  unexpectedly: 

"  Hoi'  on  heah,  Zeb.  I  reckon  hit's  ma  time  to  bus'  loose. 
Miss  Lee,  you  come  mighty  near  not  bein'  a  Taxta,  and  young 
Masta  Bob  wouldn't  'a'  been  one,  neither — he  wouldn't  'a' 
been  nothin'  at  all  ef  it  hadn't  been  for  Zeb." 

"What's  set  you  off,  Pansy?  Hush  now!"  Mrs.  Sum- 
merlin  commanded,  but  all  in  vain. 

"When  the  gemman  you  ma'ied,  Miss  Lee,  was  a  liT  six- 
yeah-old  boy,  one  day  they  was  a  mad  bloodhoun'  come 
tearin'  down  the  road  wit"  de  soapsuds  streelin'  off  his  mouf , 
and  ewabody  went  runnin'  and  yellin', '  Mad  dog !  mad  dog !' 

348 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"  I  seen  'em,  and  I  run  as  fas'  as  de  bes'  of  'em.  But  when 
de  road  was  clear,  dere's  young  Masta  Bob's  pappy  playin* 
in  de  road  and  payin'  no  attention. 

"That  ole  mad  dog  come  snappin'  and  slaverin'  right  fur 
him,  and  ewabody  freeze  up  and  stand  gapin',  waitin'. 

"But  one  young  buck  nigga  he  run  like  he's  a  wolfhoun' 
and  he  jump  for  that  mad  dog,  and  him  and  it  roll  in  de  dus' 
togetha.  You  can't  tell  who's  bitin'  who.  On'y  when  the 
fight  is  ova  that  mad  dog's  a  daid  dog.  He  layin'  on  he 
back  with  his  tongue  lollin'  out.  The  man  is  on  the  ground, 
too,  kivered  wit'  foam  and  blood.  I  seen  the  blood!  The 
boy  you  ma'ied  aftawards  wasn't  even  scratched,  but  the 
nigga  had  his  arm  'mos'  tore  off  him.  Does  you  know  how 
they  cured  that  nigga?  They  brand  him  with  a  red-hot 
iron.  That's  what  they  done.  And  thah's  the  brand!" 

She  seized  Zeb  by  the  sleeve,  shoved  the  cuff  high,  and 
bared  a  long,  livid  scar  puckering  the  black  skin. 

Zeb  had  almost  forgotten  the  ancient  deed.  He  felt  sheep 
ish  now  and  pulled  his  cuff  down  decently,  grumbling:  "Ah, 
that's  all  ova  and  done,  Pansy.  Newa  mine  abote  that." 

Pansy  would  not  be  cheated  of  her  ecstasy  of  rage: 

"Ova  and  done,  is  it!  Well,  I  reckon  not.  Miss  Lee, 
you  listen  to  me.  When  Zeb  save  yo'  HT  husban'  from  the 
bloodhoun'  they  brand  him  wit'  a  hot  iron,  but  they  take 
keer  of  him.  Now,  though,  when  he  save  yo'  son  from  bein' 
ca'ied  off  by  them  mad  dogs  from  Texas,  you  goin'  brand 
him  again  and  turn  him  off!  You  is,  is  you?  Well,  all  I  got 
to  say  is  white  folks  ain't  what  they  useter  was.  Come  on, 
Zeb,  I  got  a  hundad  and  fo'  dolla's  and  fo'ty-fo'  cents,  and 
when  they  turn  you  off  they  turn  me  off.  Come  on!" 

The  three  white  women  stood  aghast.  Their  hearts  were 
full  of  amazement,  shame,  gratitude,  and  love  for  the  two 
old  blacks.  If  Zeb  and  Pansy  had  been  whites,  or  dogs,  or 
horses,  they  would  have  been  embraced,  kissed,  and  caressed. 

But  such  a  demonstration  toward  Zeb  was  impossible. 
He  relieved  them  from  their  embarrassment  of  awe  and  of 
shackled  affection  by  turning  to  Pansy  with  an  adoration 
disguised  as  mockery: 

"When  yo'  mammy  named  you  'Pansy,'  Pansy,  she  was 
suttainly  a  po'  prophick.  A  name  would  suit  you  betta 
would  be  Catnip — or  Peruvian  Bark.  But  you  suit  me.  It's 

349 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

abote  time  we  was  gettin'  ma'ied.  We  been  engaged  goin' 
on  fifty  years.  Come  on,  honey,  let's  go  to  the  pahson.  I'll 
resume  my  vacurum-cleanin',  and  I  can  find  a  lot  of  washin' 
for  you  to  take  in." 

He  took  her  old  burnt-liver-colored  hand  in  his,  but  Pansy 
was  tumbling  to  earth  now  from  her  first  flight  in  high  alti 
tudes,  and  she  wrenched  her  hand  loose. 

"Ah,  go  on,  you  ole  fool!" 

Zeb  fell  back,  completely  exiled  now.     But  Pansy  said: 

"You  kin  come  with  me  and  git  ma  old  trunk  down  them 
stairs." 

This  was  all  the  acceptance  Zeb  needed.  So  long  as  the 
spirit  was  there,  he  did  not  cavil  at  the  language.  He  fairly 
hopped  up  the  stairway,  forgetting  his  master's  money  in  the 
joy  of  being  a  bridegroom  at  last. 

As  Pansy  moved  grimly  after  him,  the  three  women 
stared  at  her  through  tears  of  deep  and  tender  homage. 
They  longed  for  words  befitting  her  sable  majesty. 

Just  then  the  door-bell  rang.  Her  weary  feet  turned  toward 
the  door  of  themselves,  but  April,  with  a  smiling  irony,  said: 

"I  thought  you  had  resigned." 

This  almost  broke  Pansy's  back.  She  nodded,  sighed, 
"Yassum,"  and  went  clumping  up  the  stairs,  muttering, 
"I'll  just  git  ma  bonnet  and  shawl." 

April  was  so  absorbed  in  tormenting  Pansy  that  she  forgot 
whom  to  expect  when  she  opened  the  door. 

"Bob!"  she  gasped,  as  if  he  were  the  last  man  she  could 
imagine. 

He  stood  there  like  a  truant  who  has  been  whipped  by  all 
the  world  and  has  come  back  to  his  teacher  for  the  worst 
whipping  of  all. 

"How  do  you  do,  April!"  he  faltered.  "How  do  you  do, 
Mrs.  Summerlin!  Hello,  mother!" 

"Come  in,  won't  you?"  said  April,  forcing  him  to  step 
forward  as  she  closed  the  door  behind  him. 

He  was  so  miserable  that  he  would  have  been  glad  to  learn 
that  the  Yarmys  were  after  him,  as  they  were. 

Joe  had  called  up  the  Deucalion,  only  to  be  given  the  uni 
versal  reply  that  Mr.  Taxter  had  not  returned. 

Kate  and  Joe  could  think  of  nothing  else  to  do  but  go  to 

350 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

lie  in  wait  for  him.  They  were  foolish  with  rage  and  gam 
bling  with  destiny.  In  their  fear  of  leaving  Bob  the  satis 
faction  of  having  made  fools  of  them,  they  were  ready  to 
make  bigger  fools  of  themselves. 

They  paced  up  and  down  the  street  until  they  saw  Bob's 
mother  get  out  of  a  taxi  and  go  in.  Expecting  her  to  come 
out,  they  waited  and  waited,  walked  and  walked. 

At  length  she  reappeared,  got  into  a  taxicab,  and  drove 
away.  They  had  no  idea  whither  she  went,  as  they  had  not 
been  near  enough  to  hear  the  address  she  gave  the  driver. 

They  argued  that  she  had  not  found  Bob  at  home  and  had 
given  up  waiting.  They  continued  their  sentry  duty  until 
their  last  patience  was  spent.  Joe  resolved  to  go  in  and 
insist  upon  some  information  from  the  desk-clerk  if  he  had 
to  flash  a  gun  on  him. 

He  left  Kate  at  the  corner  and  marched  on  the  hotel. 
Just  as  he  put  his  foot  on  the  steps  Bob  appeared  at  the 
door,  whistled  to  a  passing  cab,  ran  out  to  the  street,  and 
got  in. 

Joe  heard  him  give  the  familiar  address  of  April's  apart 
ment-house.  He  hurried  back  to  Kate,  and  found  her  ready 
for  a  show-down  with  fate.  They  were  not  of  those  who  fear 
their  fate  too  much  or  whose  deserts  are  small;  they  did 
not  fear  to  put  it  to  the  touch  and  win  or  lose  it  all. 


CHAPTER  X 

WHILE  Kate  and  Joe  drew  near,  like  Dunsany's  jade- 
green  gods  advancing  on  their  victims,  April  was 
wasting  precious  moments  at  her  old  sport  of  teasing  Bob. 

"Too  bad  you  lost  your  heart  and  your  head,  your  bride 
and  your  boodle,  all  in  one  busy  day!" 

Bob  was  very  solemn  in  his  rejoinder : 

"I  didn't  lose  my  heart  yesterday.  I  broke  it,  but  I've 
still  got  it.  It's  about  all  I  have  got." 

"I  supposed  it  was  the  loss  of  your  bride  that  drove  you 
to  drink." 

"No,  that's  the  one  consolation  I  have." 

"But  you  discharged  Zeb  for  making  you  miss  the 
wedding." 

"It  wasn't  for  that;  it  was  for  disobeying  and  making 
such  a  fool  of  me — even  a  bigger  fool  than  I  made  of  myself." 

"Poor  old  devoted  man,  trying  to  be  a  slave  again." 

" '  Poor,'  eh  ?  He's  got  five  thousand  dollars  of  mine  some 
where.  I'd  believe  he  took  the  first  five  thousand,  too,  but 
he  was  up-stairs  at  the  time  it  disappeared.  And  did  you 
know  that  he  practically  accused  you  of  taking  it?" 

"  Me !    He  accused  me  ? ' ' 

"Well,  he  didn't  exactly  accuse  you,  but  he  said  it  was 
probably  taken  by  somebody  who  loved  me  and  wanted  to 
save  me  from  giving  it  to  the  Yarmys." 

"Speaking  of  them,"  said  April,  "where  do  you  suppose 
they  are?" 

"I  don't  know  and  I  don't  want  to.  It  was  a  short  en 
gagement,  but  lively  while  it  lasted." 

"Has  it  been  broken?" 

"Well,  not  formally.    But  the  bride  has  decamped." 

"Are  you  sure  that  she's  not  waiting  for  you  somewhere?" 

"O  Lord,  don't  suggest  it!"  And  Bob  mopped  a  sudden 
moisture  from  his  brow. 

352 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

"You  don't  want  to  see  your  fiancee  again?" 

"  I  should  say  not !  considering  the  peculiar  way  she  became 
my  fiancee." 

April's  curiosity  flared.  "It  would  be  mighty  interesting 
to  know  just  how  the  romance  started." 

"I  can't  explain  just  yet — some  day,  when — well,  some 
day." 

"And  while  you're  waiting  for  that,  what  are  you  going 
to  do?" 

"There's  nothing  much  for  me  to  do  except  to  go  back  into 
the  aviation  service.  They'll  let  me  in,  I  reckon,  as  a  lieu 
tenant  again — not  much  money  nowadays;  in  fact,  it's  so 
little  that  the  army  officers  can't  live  on  it.  They're  re 
signing  in  droves,  and  they'll  be  glad  to  get  me  back.  An 
aviator  gets  twenty-five  per  cent,  more  than  the  other 
services." 

Mrs.  Taxter  spoke  up: 

"Bob  honey,  if  you  have  any  notions  about  my  letting 
you  go  back  into  those  awful  clouds  again,  you  can  lay  them 
aside  right  now.  You've  ridden  in  your  last  airship,  son." 

"But  I  haven't  any  money,  not  a  cent.  I  don't  know 
anything  else  but  air." 

April  had  to  say,  "You  know  a  lot  about  oil,  don't  you?" 

"Ah,  forget  it,  can't  you?"  Bob  grumbled,  wincing. 
Then  he  spoke  more  tenderly  as  he  took  April  by  the  arm 
and  led  her  to  a  corner  over  by  the  modeling-stand.  "I 
deserved  to  lose  the  money,  but  always  remember  one  thing, 
April :  the  only  reason  I  fooled  with  that  oil  gamble  was  that 
I  wanted  to  make  more  money  than  you  had  so  that  I  could 
ask  you  to  marry  me.  I  felt  like  a  pauper  with  only  ten 
thousand  dollars  and  you  with  twenty-five  thousand  in  your 
own  name.  So  I  dreamed  of  being  a  Coal-oil  Johnny  in  a 
few  weeks  and  dazzling  you.  I  didn't  know  any  other  way 
to  multiply  my  money  by  ten.  And  now  I've  multiplied  it 
by  zero.  But  I  did  love  you,  and  I  always  shall." 

April  felt  strange  tremors  in  her  heart  and  a  tremor  of 
tears  at  her  eyelids.  If  Bob  had  not  persisted  in  using  the 
past  tense,  she  might  have  told  him  how  bitterly  sweetly  she 
loved  him  still.  But  until  he  asked  her  to  be  engaged  to 
him  again  she  could  hardly  confess. 

She  stood  by  the  statue  she  had  made  of  him.  It  was 

353 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

pretty  well  battered,  but  the  wings  she  had  broken  from 
the  shoulders  were  still  lying  on  the  modeling-stand.  She 
picked  them  up  and  thrust  their  wire  armatures  into  the 
shoulder-blades  of  the  statue.  But  the  wings  would  not 
stick.  Wings  simply  would  not  stick  to  Bob's  shoulders. 

Still  he  saw  the  intention,  and  he  was  heartened  to  ask, 
not  for  her  love,  but  for  that  poor  thing,  forgiveness,  and  in  a 
dreadfully  far  future. 

"Do  you  suppose  the  time  will  ever  come  when  you  can 
forgive  me?" 

"I  shouldn't  be  surprised,"  she  smiled.  Then,  casting 
her  eyes  up,  she  caught  a  glimpse  of  Zeb  in  the  shadow  of  the 
upper  hall,  staring  at  Bob  with  the  woeful  eyes  of  a  kicked- 
out  hound  that  lingers  and  mourns.  So  she  put  in  a  plea 
for  him. 

"The  Lord's  Prayer  says,  'Forgive  us  our  trespasses  as 
we  forgive  them  that  trespass  against  us.'  Have  you  for 
given  Zeb  yet  ?  Don't  you  think  you  ought  to  take  him  back 
before  you  ask  anybody  to  take  you  back?" 

Bob,  who  had  no  suspicion  that  Zeb  had  returned  and  con 
verted  the  women  to  his  cause,  was  bewildered  by  the 
suggestion. 

"Take  him  back?  If  I  could  find  him,  I'd  take  him  back 
with  a  club!  Bat  he'll  never  come  back,  because  he  knows  I 
haven't  got  any  more  money  to  steal.  I  couldn't  even  pay 
his  wages  if  he  were  the  honestest- darky  that  ever  lived." 

"Well,  he's  all  of  that,"  said  April,  relenting  before  the 
pathos  of  Bob's  humiliation.  "The  fact  is,  Bob,  that  Zeb 
came  in  awhile  ago  and  brought  back  all  your  money — the 
whole  ten  thousand  dollars!" 

This  was  too  incredible  to  accept  on  the  first  telling,  and 
on  the  repetition  it  was  as  shocking  as  the  blast  of  light 
that  shined  on  Saul  and  knocked  him  off  his  horse. 

Bob  sat  down  to  it.  And  he  was  like  a  child  at  a  second 
coming  of  Santa  Claus  with  all  his  lost  and  broken  toys 
restored.  He  had  his  ten  thousand  lost  prodigal  dollars 
home  for  a  glorious  reunion. 

And  then,  as  he  realized  what  anguishes  he  had  endured 
from  that  benevolent  robbery,  he  grew  furious  with  wrath. 
The  mother  whose  boy  has  run  away  will  adore  him  and  pray 
for  him  till  he  returns,  and  then  how  she  will  go  for  him! 

354 


LOVE  GOES  OUT 

Of  all  the  wraths,  there  are  none  more  bitter  than  those 
aroused  by  the  waste  of  precious  sufferings. 

Now  as  never  before  Bob  blamed  Zeb  for  making  a  fool 
of  him — a  tragical,  farcical  fool — a  child  whose  toys  have 
been  hidden  from  him  for  a  while  lest  he  break  them. 

Bob  gnashed  his  teeth  and  demanded  to  know  where  the 
black  villain  was  hiding  now.  But  first  he  wanted  to  see  the 
beautiful  face  of  his  money  again. 

April  refused  him  this  treat.  "Unless  you  promise  to  for 
give  Zeb  and  take  him  back  I  won't  tell  you  where  the  money 
is."  For  one  thing,  she  did  not  know. 

Bob  mutinied  at  this. 

"Take  back  an  old  wretch  that  disobeys  every  command 
I  give?  sends  off  all  the  clothes  he  doesn't  ruin,  and  makes 
a  fool  of  me — and  then  laughs!  Take  back  a  tyrant  like 
that?" 

Mrs.  Taxter  tried  to  smooth  his  smarts. 

"Now,  Bob  honey,  your  father  used  to  tell  me  abote 
Zeb's  father.  He  was  such  a  tyrant  they  called  him  the 
Czar!" 

Bob  protested:  "Well,  why  did  they  free  the  negroes? 
So  that  the  whites  could  become  their  slaves  instead?" 

Mrs.  Summerlin  smiled  and  pleaded:  "It's  worth  being  a 
slave  to  be  loved,  Bob.  The  only  good  servant  is  the  tyrant. 
I  get  so  vexed  at  Pansy  I  want  to  slap  her;  but  she  bosses 
me  for  my  good,  not  for  her  pleasure.  Devotion  is  a  mighty 
rare  thing,  Bob;  it  can't  be  bought." 

April  laid  her  warm  hand  on  Bob's  and  spoke  in  her  warm 
est  tone,  "Come  on,  Bob,  take  the  old  fellow  back." 

Her  wheedling  tone  was  irresistible.  Bob  grumbled, 
"Well — if  he  will  consent  to  obey  me,  and  be  respectful,  and 
do  what  he's  told  hereafter,  and  never — " 

April  lifted  her  head  and  her  voice:  "Will  you,  Zeb?  I 
know  you're  listening." 

"Why,  Miss  April,  I  'ain't  hud  a  wud!"  Zeb  called  down 
from  above.  Bob  looked  up  at  him  with  a  murderous  glare. 

April  beckoned  Zeb  to  descend,  but  he  shook  his  head. 

"Oh,  I'm  liable  to  come  down,  ain't  I,  and  have  ma  last  few 
teef  knocked  down  ma  froat?" 

Bob  moved  toward  the  stairway  with  menace  in  his  prayer: 
"Come  on  down,  Zeb.  Come  along  on  down." 

355 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

"No,  Masta — or  Mista  Taxta,  I  don't  come  down;  and  if 
you  come  up,  I  go  higher.  Me  and  Pansy  is  done  with 
you-uns." 

Bob  gave  him  up.  " I  can't  kneel  to  the  old  brute,  can  I?" 

April  whispered,  "Call  him  Uncle." 

Bob  tried  once  more :  "Come  on,  Zeb.    I  won't  hurt  you." 

"Nossa!" 

"Uncle  Zeb." 

Zeb,  hardly  believing  his  ears,  leaned  over  the  balcony  rail. 
"What  dat  lass  t'ing  you  call  me?" 

"Uncle  Zeb." 

"Say  it  ag'in,  so's  Pansy  kin  hear  it!" 

"Uncle  Zeb." 

Zeb  turned  to  Pansy.  There  was  molasses  in  his  voice: 
" Did  you  hear  him ?  Did  you  hear  dat 'Uncle' word?  I'll 
just  have  to  take  dat  young  rascal  back,  looks  like."  He 
went  down  the  stairs  with  the  circumstance  of  a  dog  that  has 
been  whipped  and  is  coming  forward  to  be  reconciled. 
"Well,  I  looked  atter  yo'  grandpappy,  and  I  suppose  I  hatter 
look  atter  you." 

Bob  had  to  laugh.     "You  worthless  old  scoundrel!" 

"Oh,  dem  musical  sounds!"  Zeb  guffawed,  so  confident 
now  that  he  made  bold  to  say,  as  he  clumped  down  the  steps : 
"And,  Miss  April,  when  you  decide  you  want  to  marry 
Masta  Bob,  just  let  me  know.  O'  course,  Masta  Bob  has  a 
way  o'  bein'  late  to  weddin's — he  plumb  missed  one  entirely 
yistaday,  but  if  you'm  to  be  de  bride,  I'll  guarantee  we'll  be 
dah;  we'll  be  dah!" 

Bob  threw  a  book  at  him.  Zeb  laughed  as  if  this  were  a 
caress:  "  You  young  folks  needs  us  old  haids.  Why,  do  you 
know,  Miz  Taxta,  what  trick  them  Yarmys  played  on  our 
boy?  The  old  badger  game!  Yassum,  the  same  old  trick — 
only  Masta  Bob  put  a  new  twist  on  it.  He  offer  to  marry 
de  woman !  Yassum  I ' ' 

"So  that  was  how  she  tricked  you!"  April  cried,  aloud. 
"She  played  on  your  chivalry!" 

Bob  could  not  reply,  but  Zeb  had  no  scruples.  "Yas 
sum,  his  shiftlary  get  him  into  so  much  trouble  I  couldn't 
hardly  git  him  out.  You-all  will  be  needin'  me  a  long 
while  yet." 

And  now,  just  as  the  air  was  clearing  and  filling  with  aa 

356 


LCVE  GOES  OUT, 

incense  of  contentment,  the  door-bell  rang.    April  answered 
it  again,  and  Joe  and  Kate  Yarmy  rushed  in  past  her. 

Joe,  seeing  Bob,  snarled:  "There  you  are,  you  sneakin' 
welsher!  I've  got  you  dead  to  rights  at  last.  Put  'em 
up!"  He  emphasized  the  words  with  a  pistol.  And  Bob 
put  'em  up. 


Book   VI 
LOVE    COMES    IN 


CHAPTER  I 

cheap  and  dime-novelish  tableau  was  the  veriest 
.  realism  in  1919-20. 

The  gun-play  of  the  detective  drama  and  of  the  movie 
West  had  grown  so  frequent  in  the  big  cities  of  America  just 
then  that  nobody  knew  when  his  or  her  turn  would  come. 

People  in  restaurants,  clubs,  homes,  street-cars,  were  being 
lined  up  and  robbed  with  the  tritest  sensationalism.  A 
little  later  two  bu  glars  would  stab  a  man  and  beat  a  scream 
ing  woman  senseless  in  a  great  hotel  at  Forty-second  Street 
and  Broadway,  climb  down  the  outside  wall  of  the  hotel  in 
full  daylight  till  the  shot  of  a  policeman  in  the  street  drove 
them  in  at  a  window;  and  then  they  would  slide  down  the 
cable  of  an  elevator  to  the  basement,  there,  most  amazing 
fact  of  all,  to  be  caught. 

There  was  something  expectably  convincing  to  Bob  about 
the  incursion  of  Joe  with  the  ready  pistol.  Only,  this  time 
Bob  had  no  automatic  .45  for  repartee. 

The  muzzle  at  his  navel  gave  him  a  queasy  sensation  of  its 
own,  but  this  was  aggravated  by  other  miseries. 

Here  was  Kate  again,  perhaps  with  another  marriage  pro 
posal.  Bang!  went  his  romance  with  April  again.  Bang! 
went  his  ten  thousand  dollars  again. 

His  spree  had  left  him  ill  prepared  for  such  a  rending  strain 
as  this.  The  stomach  is  the  guardian  of  courage,  and  if  that 
is  gone  who  can  be  brave?  Bob's  stomach  was  a  hopeless 
invalid  to-day. 

The  women  screamed,  of  course,  till  Joe  waved  his  pistol 
like  the  nozzle  of  a  hose  and  growled: 

"Shut  up,  or  I'll  shut  you  up!" 

Joe  had  not  seen  Zeb  as  he  darted  into  the  room.  His 
hatred  was  all  for  Bob. 

"You  played  a  dirty  trick  on  us,  but  you  can't  get  away 
with  it." 

Bob  was  not  exactly  afraid,  but  he  was  disgusted  at  the 

361 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

prospect  of  dying  so  ingloriously.  He  felt  exactly  as  he  did 
when  the  Germans  humiliated  him  in  his  last  air-battle.  He 
spoke  as  a  sort  of  epitaph. 

11 1  didn't  mean  to  play  any  trick  on  you." 

"Oh  no!  O'  course  not!"  Joe  drawled,  with  no  particular 
brilliance  of  phrase.  "You  didn't  try  to  double-cross  us 
with  the  necklace,  didja?  You  didn't  give  Kate  an  empty 
box,  didja?  Oh  no!  My  God!  tryin'  to  work  the  old  box 
trick  on  us!  Whatcha  think  we  are,  a  pair  of  Reubs?" 

Bob's  surprise  was  complete.  "Why,  you've  got  the  neck 
lace,  haven't  you?" 

"Nah,  we  haven't  you!  And  you  know  it  damned  well. 
And  you're  comin'  across  with  it  or — " 

Bob  shrugged  his  shoulders  wearily:  "I  reckon  you'll  have 
to  shoot.  I  haven't  seen  it  since  I  gave  it  to  you." 

Kate  broke  in:  "And  you  said  you  loved  me!  I  was 
braggin'  to  Joe  about  how  hon'able  you  were.  And  you  tried 
to  buy  him  off  after  you  disgraced  me.  And  you  didn't  even 
pay  what  you  offered." 

"  I  didn't  mean  to  disgrace  you,  Miss  Yarmy,"  Bob  sighed. 
"If  Zeb  hadn't  stolen  my  clothes  I'd  have  gone  to  the  church. 
And  if  he  hadn't  run  off  with  my  money,  I'd  have  paid  you 
that.  I'll  pay  you  now  if  you  will  accept  it  as  a — a — " 

"How  you  goin'  to  pay  it  when  the  coon  got  away  with 
it  ?"  Joe  demanded.  Bob  was  simple  enough  to  say : 

"He  came  back." 

Zeb  had  been  motioning  him  so  violently  not  to  mention 
this  that  Joe  followed  Bob's  glance  and  caught  sight  of  Zeb 
behind  a  column  that  upheld  the  balcony. 

Joe  smiled,  a  long-toothed,  wolfish  smile.  "Oh,  you  came 
back,  didja,  you  old  smoke?" 

"Yassa,"  said  Zeb,  uncomfortably. 

Joe  took  a  good  gloat  and  inhaled  the  savor  of  his  triumph 
before  he  said  to  Bob: 

"Well,  seein'  the  nigga's  heah  with  the  money,  suppose 
you  fork  it  over — with  the  necklace — and  then  we'll  be  on 
our  way." 

He  put  out  his  left  hand,  but  Bob  had  to  admit : 

"Zeb  hasn't  given  me  the  money  yet." 

Joe  turned  to  Zeb.  "Then  slip  it  to  me,  coon.  Spit  it  out 
in  papa's  hand." 

362 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

"Nossa!"  said  Zeb,  with  a  sudden  palsy.  It  was  his  reso 
lution,  not  his  terror,  that  shook  him.  He  was  set  upon  dying 
rather  than  surrender  the  Taxter  treasure. 

He  was  like  a  man  with  the  lockjaw,  but  it  was  a  case  of 
locksoul.  Joe  was  jolted  by  his  instant  realization  of  the 
imbecile  obstinacy  that  confronted  him.  He  had  known  old 
ladies  and  servant-girls  to  fight  armed  burglars  to  death 
rather  than  give  up  a  pittance.  This  type  is  one  of  the 
hazards  of  Joe's  calling.  He  tried  to  shake  Zeb  with  ferocity. 

"Hand  it  ova,  nigga,  or,  by  God,  I'll  blow  a  hole  through 
yo'  black  hide  big  enough  to  hold  a  fence-post." 

"Nossossa!"  Zeb  chattered. 

Bob  cried  to  him:  "Zeb!  Give  him  the  money,  I  tell 
you." 

"No,  thank  y',  Masta  Bob-ob." 

"Zeb,  I  command  you!    I  don't  want  you  hurt." 

Zeb  wreathed  a  kind  of  dying  smile:  "Oh,  don't  fret 
yo'seff,  Masta  Bob.  I  reckon  Mistoo  Yahmy  ain't  goin'  to 
set  himseff  in  no  'leckrick  chair  jest  for  the  fun  of  killin'  a 
ole  coon  that  'ain't  got  long  to  live,  anyhow." 

This  was  Joe's  own  thought.  It  had  kept  his  finger  off  the 
trigger  all  this  while.  He  was  in  a  throe  of  despair  at  the 
picture  of  perishing  for  so  tawdry  a  crime.  He  drew  the 
color  line  there.  He  realized  that  he  was  himself  at  bay  now, 
for  Bob  would  jump  him  the  instant  he  fired  at  Zeb.  And 
Bob  could  whip  him.  A  very  merciful  man  might  almost 
have  felt  sorry  for  poor  Joe.  He  could  neither  go  forward 
nor  retreat,  nor  yet  stand  pat. 

This  confusion  and  the  sight  of  Zeb  as  stolid  as  one  of  those 
iron  negroes  that  used  to  be  made  for  hitching-posts  drove 
Joe  to  a  frenzy.  "I'll  help  maself,"  he  snarled,  believing 
the  money  to  be  in  Zeb's  pocket. 

He  advanced  on  Zeb  and  began  to  search  him.  Zeb 
chuckled. 

"Don't  forgit,  I's  ticklish." 

Joe  slapped  him  across  the  face. 

Zeb  laughed. 

Bob  started  to  spring.  He  could  not  endure  to  have  his 
Zeb  struck  by  another  man. 

Joe  swung  his  revolver  that  way. 

Bob  paused  a  second. 

363 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Zeb  flung  himself  on  Joe,  clutching  at  his  right  arm  and 
fairly  smothering  him  with  uncouth,  sprawling,  bearlike 
straggle. 

Bob  was  in  the  battle  on  the  instant.  He  clamped  Joe's 
wrist,  set  his  thumb-nail  in  the  tender  back  of  Joe's  right  hand 
and  bent  the  hand  upward  as  he  pried  Joe's  fingers,  one  by 
one,  from  the  grip  of  the  pistol. 

Joe  howled  with  pain  and  rage.  That  wolf-cry  brought 
Kate  in.  She  leaped  on"  Bob's  shoulders  like  a  catamount 
and  tried  to  throttle  him.  He  did  not  want  to  fight  her,  and 
he  could  only  writhe  and  breathe  hard. 

And  now  April  shot  back  into  the  cave-woman  period. 
Her  muscles  had  fought  motor-car  wheels  and  runaway 
horses,  but  never  a  fellow-human.  They  seemed  to  rejoice 
in  their  first  battle. 

With  a  swift,  grim  efficiency  she  thrust  her  arm  under 
Kate's  chin,  dragging  her  head  up  chokingly,  set  one  knee 
in  Kate's  back  and  wrenched  her  loose,  spun  her  round,  and 
flung  her  sidelong  to  the  floor,  knelt  on  her  right  arm,  and 
twisted  the  other  the  wrong  way  up  behind  her  back. 

April  had  read  so  many  jiu-jitsu  articles  and  seen  so  many 
pictures  that  she  was  astounded  to  find  how  easy  it  was. 

It  was  simply  fascinating.  She  realized  vaguely  how 
much  women  lost  when  the  Amazons  became  non-com 
batants.  Kate  and  Joe  both  cursed  and  wept  while  Bob 
and  April  worked  in  silence. 

Bob  soon  had  Joe's  pistol  in  his  own  left  hand.  Then  he 
forgot  his  chivalry  long  enough  to  collect  the  revenge  he 
owed  Joe  for  striking  Zeb.  Before  he  realized  the  indelicacy 
of  it  he  had  hauled  off  and  slugged  Joe's  submaxillary  region 
with  such  a  sledge  that  he  knocked  Joe  clean  out  of  his  body. 
Joe's  soul  skyrocketed  into  that  mysterious  bourn  where  the 
birds  tweet  and  the  stars  explode  and  whence  the  traveler 
usually  returns  after  ten  or  more  seconds. 

Joe's  tenantless  body  went  limply  through  the  air,  slid- 
dered  along  the  floor,  and  brought  up  against  the  weather- 
boarding  with  a  flop — in  much  the  same  manner  as  this  ill- 
bred  history  has  probably  been  flung  by  any  truly  well-bred 
reader  who  may  have  endured  it  thus  far. 

The  lamentable,  the  appallingly  low  and  brutish  scene 
came  to  an  end  with  Bob  forgetting  his  own  atrocity  in  his 

364 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

amazement  at  the  sight  of  his  beautiful  April  engaged  in 
twisting  yowls  out  of  the  beautiful  Kate. 

Bob  ran  to  April  and  tried  to  lift  her  from  the  floor,  but 
she  shook  him  off,  gasping:  "Let  me  alone!  If  I  let  this 
wildcat  up,  she'll  scratch  all  our  eyes  out.  Get  me  a  piece 
of  rope,  can't  you?" 

Bob  stood  wabbling,  not  knowing  what  to  do,  while  Mrs. 
Summerlin  ran  looking  for  a  cable  and  finding  nothing  but 
bits  of  knotted  twine. 

Mrs.  Taxter  had  tried  to  reach  Bob  to  help  him  in  his 
fight  with  Joe,  but  her  heart  had  given  way  and  she  had 
fainted. 

It  was  a  pretty  sight  for  a  respectable  drawing-room  when 
Pansy  appeared!  She  stared  incredulous.  At  the  first 
glimpse  of  the  hated  Yarmys  she  had  slipped  along  the  wall 
and  out  into  the  kitchen  and  thence  to  the  freight-elevator, 
where  she  had  ordered  the  boy  to  fetch  all  the  police  in  the 
world  on  the  run. 

She  flung  up  her  hands  in  stupefaction  now  as  April, 
disgusted  at  Bob,  got  to  her  feet,  jerked  Kate  to  hers,  and 
hustled  her  to  a  shallow  coat-closet. 

"Open  that!"  she  commanded. 

Pansy  alone  could  obey.  The  amazing  April  whirled  Kate 
in,  slammed  the  door,  locked  it,  leaned  against  it,  and  for  the 
first  time  had  time  to  be  amazed  at  herself. 

She  was  panting  so  ferociously  and  her  heart  was  thrum 
ming  such  a  trill  on  her  ribs  that  the  whole  room  danced. 

Bob  saw  his  mother  now,  knelt,  and  lifted  her  to  a  divan 
and  pleaded  with  her  not  to  die.  Pansy  answered  his  prayer 
by  taking  hold  of  Mrs.  Taxter's  beautiful  little  boots  and 
pulling  them  up  to  the  arm  of  the  divan,  letting  her  beautiful 
head  slip  down  to  a  lower  level. 

Zeb  sat  at  ease  on  Joe  Yarmy's  abdomen  and  waited  for 
him  to  resume. 

The  quiet  studio  was  like  the  end  of  a  spiritual  avalanche; 
A  sudden  landslide  had  brought  all  these  souls  heels  over 
head  and  every  which  way  to  the  bottom  of  the  cliff  of 
civilization. 

They  were  still  rubbing  the  bruises  of  their  dignity  and 
murmuring  to  themselves,  "Where  am  I?"  and,  "Who  am 
I?"  when  a  policeman  began  to  whack  on  the  door. 

365 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Pansy  let  him  in.  He  was  not  unused  to  such  shindies  in 
the  tenements  where  family  debates  passed  the  legal  boun 
daries,  but  he  was  dazed  to  find  such  a  spectacle  on  such  a 
stage. 

"Some  rough-house!"  he  mumbled.  He  put  up  his  pistol 
sheepishly,  drew  his  trusty  note-book,  and  said  to  Bob, 
"Name  and  address." 

Bob  stared  at  him  as  emptily  as  if  he  had  neither. 


CHAPTER  II 

HPHE  officer  motioned  Zeb  from  his  prey  and  recognized 
1  Joe  Yarmy  at  once,  though  he  called  him  by  another 
name.  The  alarm  had  gone  out  for  Joe  and  Kate  when  they 
failed  to  appear  at  the  train  they  had  promised  to  take  the 
day  before,  and  every  policeman  was  on  the  alert  for  them. 

When  April  remembered  Kate  and  let  her  out  she  was 
hardly  recognizable.  She  had  just  breathed  up  the  last  of  the 
air  left  in  the  pockets  of  the  coats  in  the  closet. 

But  she  was  so  glad  of  a  lungful  and  the  promise  of  a 
regular  supply  that  she  did  not  much  care  where  she  got  it. 

Joe's  soul  returned  slowly  and  took  up  its  various  tools 
again  like  a  factory  after  a  strike.  He,  too,  was  delighted  to 
find  himself  once  more  on  the  dear  old  earth,  and  he  did  not 
refuse  the  aid  of  the  policeman  in  clambering  to  his  feet. 

Bob  was  saved  from  painful  explanations  by  the  glib 
Zeb's  brief  words: 

"Mistoo  Ossifer,  these  yere  Yahmies  is  plain  crooks  what 
bust  in  yere  to  stick  up  the  place.  They  knowed  they  was 
a  lot  of  money  and  joolery  yere,  and  they'd  'a'  tooken  it,  too, 
ef  Lootenant  Taxta  hadn't  made  one  of  them  air  raids  like 
he  made  in  France  on  them  ole  Jummans." 

This  established  everything  pleasantly  and  satisfied  the 
policeman  as  to  the  credentials  of  everybody  concerned. 
On  Bob's  promise  to  appear  and  make  a  complaint,  he  took 
out  a  pair  of  handcuffs,  joined  the  hands  of  Joe  and  Kate  in 
unholy  padlock,  and  marched  them  off. 

Peace  settled  down  upon  the  Summerlin  apartment  with 
an  almost  crushing  restfulness.  For  a  long  time  everybody 
was  content  to  loll  at  ease  and  just  exist — everybody  except 
Zeb  and  Pansy,  who  stood  respectfully  awaiting  orders.  They 
were  not  expected  to  get  tired  enough  to  sit  down  before 
white  folks. 

But  Zeb's  shivery  timbers  advised  him  to  slip  out  into  the 

367 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

kitchen  for  a  chair  and  a  chat  with  Pansy.    Bob  put  up  one 
heavy  finger  to  check  him : 
'Oh,  Zeb." 

'Yassa!    Yas,  Masta  Bob?" 
'Mighty  good  work  you  did." 
'Wonderful!"  said  April. 
'Splendid!"  Mrs.  Summerlin. 

'A  real  hero!"  Mrs.  Taxter. 

Bob  finished  the  old  man  by  saying,  "If  I  ever  said 
anything  unkind  to  you,  I — " 

Zeb  was  afraid  that  in  his  unsettled  condition  his  master 
might  apologize.  He  hastened  to  save  him. 

"I  didn't  year  no  unkind  remahks;  nossa!" 

Bob  smiled,  understanding  and  luxuriating  in  the  profound 
self-abnegation  of  his  devotee.  He  felt  unworthy  of  it,  but 
it  felt  nice  to  be  a  god  to  somebody,  and  he  knew  how  com 
fortable  it  made  Zeb  to  imagine  him  a  god,  so  he  said: 

"You're  a  true  Taxter,  Zeb — I  mean  Uncle  Zeb;  and  I'm 
proud  of  you." 

At  this  Uncling  Zeb's  face  puckered  like  a  scared  picka 
ninny's  and  tears  flooded  over  into  his  wide  mouth.  He 
began  to  laugh  aloud  to  disguise  the  sobs  that  shook  him : 

"O  Lawdy,  O  Lawdy!  I  been  waitin'  long  for  this  day." 

In  the  era  of  slavery  negroes  who  had  saved  their  masters' 
lives  or  fortunes  were  often  allowed  free.  In  these  distress 
ful  days  of  universal  freedom  Zeb  asked  only  to  be  allowed 
back  into  the  comfort  of  belonging  to  somebody. 

Down  in  Georgia  there  was  an  old  negro  about  Zeb's  age, 
Bill  Yopp  by  name.  He  was  called  "Ten-cent  Bill "  because 
for  eleven  Christmases,  including  the  1919  festival,  he  went 
about  collecting  dimes  to  buy  gifts  for  the  inmates  of  the 
Old  Soldiers'  Home  at  Macon — not  the  old  Union  soldiers, 
nor  the  old  black  soldiers,  but  the  old  Confederate  soldiers 
who  had  fought  to  keep  him  a  slave.  When  Bill  was  a 
fifteen-year-old  slave  he  had  gone  out  on  a  battlefield  and 
brought  in  his  beloved  wounded  master,  Captain  Yopp,  and 
nursed  him  back  to  life.  In  1909  Bill  found  the  Captain  in 
the  Old  Soldiers'  Home,  a  helpless  pauper  veteran  of  eighty- 
three,  and  he  returned  to  his  devotions  as  Zeb  did. 

Let  him  that  is  without  chain  cast  the  first  stone.  This 
freedom-thing — what  is  it?  Who  has  it?  The  very  defini- 

368 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

tion  of  it  has  an  eternal  alibi.  It  is  always  the  next  release, 
for  we  step  from  one  noose  to  another,  we  fling  off  one  livery 
to  disclose  another,  like  the  circus  clown  who  takes  off  suit 
after  suit  as  his  horse  gallops  round  and  round  the  same  ring. 

Every  one  of  us  is  born  or  bred  or  sold  into  some  form  of 
slavery,  whether  the  master  be  a  man,  a  woman,  a  child,  a 
god,  a  cult,  craze,  habit,  party,  sect,  theory,  or  what  not. 
The  worst  slaves  are  perhaps  those  who  are  slaves  of  the 
mania  of  being  free.  The  wiser  ones  accept  a  yoke  that  is 
not  too  tight,  and  settle  into  it  for  a  good  pull  of  a  good  load. 

Abraham  Lincoln  rose  from  the  very  nothingness  of  social 
prestige  to  be  one  of  the  great  men  of  all  time.  He  freed  the 
slaves  and  was  shot  dead  for  it  by  a  man  who  cried,  "Sic 
semper  tyrannis!"  I 

At  the  very  time  Zeb  was  coming  back  into  servitude  as 
into  an  old  homestead  thousands  of  Americans  and  immi 
grants  were  denouncing  America  as  the  land  of  the  capitalist 
and  the  home  of  the  slave.  From  the  Russian  cruelty,  mis 
sionaries  of  chaos  were  stealing  in  to  tell  the  American  work- 
ingmen  that  their  soaring  wages  were  but  the  pittances  of 
helots.  Shiploads  of  the  zealots  would  soon  be  deported 
from  the  jail  of  an  America  that  was  not  good  enough  for 
them  to  the  paradises  they  dreaded. 

No,  Zeb  was  not  such  a  fool  as  he  looked.  He  knew  him 
self,  as  Socrates  advised,  and  he  ignored  himself,  as  Anatole 
France  advised.  He  had  genius  and  courage,  but  they  were 
altruistic;  they  bore  the  Taxter  brand.  And  now  he  was 
home  where  he  longed  to  be. 

Bob  and  April  were  slaves  of  their  own  tempers  and  they 
had  nobody  who  could  or  would  rule  them.  They  were 
captains  of  their  own  souls  and  their  souls  were  full  of  mutiny 
within  and  storm  without.  By  a  pleasant  irony  the  captain 
of  a  ship  who  is  everybody's  slave,  the  owner's,  the  crew's, 
and  the  weather's,  is  treated  with  respect  and  called  master. 
A  Zeb  safe  in  harbor  is  treated  with  pity  as  a  servant.  Even 
Bob  felt  that  he  condescended  when  he  spoke  from  his 
Olympian  misery — very  Jovially  (the  canny  Greeks  knew 
enough  to  represent  the  boss  of  their  gods  as  himself  a  slave 
of  fate).  Bob  said: 

"If  there's  anything  you  want,  Zeb — up  to  ten  thousand 
dollars — help  yourself  and  give  me  the  change." 

369 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Zeb  shook  his  head.  He  was  in  nothing  more  emancipate 
than  in  his  freedom  from  many  wants: 

"Is  on'y  one  thing  I  hanker  atter,  Masta  Bob,  and  that's 
seem'  the  Taxta  necklace  roun'  Miss  April's  neck  whah  it 
belongs  at." 

Bob  blushed  with  such  chagrin  that  he  felt  almost  relieved 
at  having  an  evasion  ready: 

"  The  Taxter  necklace !    Heaven  only  knows  where  that  is. " 

Zeb  climbed  the  golden  stairs.     "Me  and  Heaven  knows !" 

He  hobbled  to  the  vacuum-cleaner  container  and  back  to 
the  middle  of  the  room.  And  then  he  turned  the  can  upside 
down  and  emptied  a  heap  of  rubbish  on  the  rug.  When 
Pansy  smacked  him  over  the  ear  without  hesitation  he  shook 
his  head  and  chuckled. 

"Don't  begin  dat,  Pansy,  befo'  we's  married." 

He  stirred  the  gray  dust  with  his  black  fingers.  Every 
body  began  to  sneeze.  Bob  shouied: 

"Stop  it,  s-s-s-top  it-t!" 

"Sneezin*  is  good  luck!"  Zeb  laughed.  He  picked  up  a 
twisted  thousand-dollar  bill,  smacked  the  dirt  from  it  and 
passed  it  across  to  his  astonished  master.  The  other  nine 
followed  as  gracefully  as  a  procession  of  somewhat  bedraggled 
Muses. 

With  due  dramatic  delay  for  effect,  Zeb  lifted  out  the  neck 
lace  and  held  it  gleaming  in  the  air  while  he  blew  the  dust 
away. 

Everybody  exclaimed  aloud.     Bob  cried: 

"How  on  earth  did  that  get  there!" 

Zeb  reveled  in  his  occult  dignity:  "Well,  hit  would  take 
a  heap  of  explainin' !  Main  thing  is  the  old  Vacurum  Savin's 
Bank  don't  pay  no  intrust,  but  you  git  back  what  you  put 
in." 

He  struggled  from  his  knees  to  his  feet  with  the  grace  of  a 
rheumatic  camel,  and  went  to  April  with  the  necklace. 

She  quenched  the  shine  of  his  smile  by  shaking  her  head. 
Bob  had  not  spoken. 

Zeb  went  to  Bob  eagerly. 

Bob  felt  unable  and  unworthy  to  ask  April  to  accept  it. 
He  dismally  motioned  Zeb  to  his  mother,  and  the  heart- 
shaken  Zeb  poured  the  gems  into  her  reluctant  hand. 

He  waited  a  long  moment,  understanding  only  that  the 

370 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

high  gods  of  his  world  would  not  deign  to  crown  his  work 
and  grant  his  prayer.  Then  he  slumped  out  to  the  kitchen, 
wagging  a  doleful  head. 

Pansy  followed  him,  so  grieved  that  she  forgot  the  pile  of 
rubbish  in  the  center  of  the  main  rug. 

Bob  saw  the  rubbish  of  his  own  life  disgracing  hirn  and  he 
had  no  vacuum-cleaner  to  make  it  vanish. 


CHAPTER  III 

"AX  7 HAT- ALL  is  this  yere  ole  world  a-comin'  tew?" 

VV  black  Zeb  asked  black  Pansy  in  the  kitchen. 
Pansy  had  to  give  it  up. 

It  was  one  of  the  first  questions  ever  asked  and  it  is  still 
being  given  up  by  everybody  who  is  wise  enough  to  differen 
tiate  between  "I  know"  and  "I  guess."  If  the  Sphinx  had 
asked  this  riddle  of  (Edipus  he  would  not  have  answered  her. 

[FAIR  WARNING:  The  rest  of  this  chapter  is  a  side-trip 
that  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  journey.  It  is  a  long  devour 
along  old  unimproved  roads,  down  deep  gullies,  across  steep 
ridges,  up  into  a  fog-belt  where  nothing  much  can  be  descried, 
then  back  down  again.  It  gets  the  traveler  nowhere  in  par 
ticular,  and  comes  out  where  it  went  in.] 

No  other  people  has  ever  cherished  the  thought  of  life 
after  death,  says  Doctor  Breasted,  so  firmly  as  the  Egyptians. 
In  the  fifteenth  century  B.C.  they  were  convinced  of  resur 
rection  and  the  priests  called  upon  the  dead:  "Loose  your 
bandages,  throw  off  the  sand  from  thy  face.  The  tomb  is 
opened  for  thee." 

Men  were  just  as  good  and  just  as  bad  and  just  as  both  as 
now  as  far  back  as  the  record  runs.  At  the  very  opposite 
pole  of  time  from  us,  in  the  twentieth  century  B.C.,  a  king 
of  Egypt  left  this  epitaph:  " I  gave  bread  to  all  the  hungry. 
I  clothed  him  who  was  naked.  I  satisfied  the  wolves  of  the 
mountain  and  the  fowl  of  the  sky.  I  never  oppressed  one  in 
possession  of  his  property.  I  spoke  and  told  that  which  was 
good.  Never  was  there  one  fearing  because  of  one  stronger 
than  he." 

A  hundred  years  before  that  an  Egyptian  doctor  said, 
"Never  did  I  do  anything  evil  toward  any  person."  Two 
centuries  after  him  the  great  explorer  Harkhuf  says:  "Never 
did  I  say  aught  evil  to  a  powerful  one  against  anybody.  I 
desired  that  it  might  be  well  with  me  in  the  Great  God's 
presence." 

373 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

They  could  be  wicked,  too,  and  a  king  five  thousand  years 
ago  was  praised  as  "the  man  who  takes  women  from  their 
husbands  whither' he  wills  and  when  his  heart  desires." 

There  were  skeptics  then,  as  well;  Koheleths  and  Omar 
Khayyams,  Voltaires  and  Bob  Ingersolls.  There  were 
many  who  regretted  that  no  one  came  back  from  the  grave  to 
"tell  us  how  they  fare." 

To-day  many  eminent  men  claim  to  telephone  the  dead, 
as  many  men  claimed  then  to  recall  them. 

Both  cynics  and  believers  have  always  dwelt  together  in  a 
bond  of  argument. 

Four  thousand  years  ago  some  complained  of  the  dead, 
"They  are  as  if  they  had  never  been,"  and  advised  as  the 
only  immortality:  "Give  bread  to  him  that  hath  no  field. 
So  shalt  thou  gain  a  good  name  for  the  future  forever.  .  .  . 
There  is  none  that  returns  again." 

A  poem  was  written  fifteen  hundred  years  before  the  Book 
of  Job.  It  might  have  been  written  to-day.  It  will  be 
written  again  and  again  on  all  the  to-morrows, 

Lo,  my  name  is  abhorred, 

Lo,  more  than  the  odor  of  fowl 

On  the  willow-hill  full  of  geese  .  .  . 

To  whom  do  I  speak  to-day? 

Hearts  are  thievish, 

Every  man  seizes  his  neighbor's  goods. 

To  whom  do  I  speak  to-day? 

He  of  the  peaceful  face  is  wretched, 

The  good  is  disregarded  in  every  place  .  .  . 

Death  is  before  me  to-day 

Like  the  odor  of  lotus  flowers, 

Like  sitting  on  the  shore  of  drunkenness. 

As  late  as  only  1900  B.C.  a  priest  of  Heliopolis  was  bewailing 
the  fact  that  he  could  find  nothing  new  to  say.  "  The  fashion 
of  yesterday  is  like  to-day." 

Then  there  was  Ipuwer,  of  the  same  epoch,  who  mourned 
that  war  destroyed  everything.  "Blood  is  everywhere." 
He  compared  the  land  to  a  potter's  wheel  that  turns  round 
and  round.  "The  owners  of  robes  are  in  rags;  and  he  who 
wove  not  for  himself  is  owner  of  fine  linen.  Mirth  has 
perished.  It  is  no  longer  made.  Indeed,  all  small  cattle, 
their  hearts  weep." 

373 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

Yet  he  foresaw  the  coming  of  a  better  day.  Breasted 
says,  "This  is,  of  course,  Messianism  nearly  fifteen  hundred 
years  before  its  appearance  among  the  Hebrews." 

Ipuwer  foresaw  the  coming  of  an  ideal  King,  the  sun-god 
Ra.  "He  brings  cooling  to  the  flame.  It  is  said  he  is  the 
shepherd  of  all  men.  There  is  no  evil  in  his  heart.  Where 
is  he  to-day?  Doth  he  sleep,  perchance?" 

In  1920  B.C.  the  hope  and  the  despair  were  equally  keen  in 
congenial  hearts  according  to  their  custom. 

Against  Ipuwer's  despondency  over  his  to-day  and  his 
high  trust  in  the  morrow  stood  the  story  of  the  Eloquent 
Peasant  who  was  robbed  and  protested  that  the  authori 
ties  "make  common  cause  with  the  thief,"  as  men  pro 
test  in  America  to-day  against  corrupt  judges  and  criminal 
police. 

He  appealed  to  the  King  who  guarded  the  poor,  he  cried 
for  social  justice  the  same  words  that  men  still  cry  four 
thousand  years  later. 

The  Wisdom  of  Ptahhotep  holds  up  the  very  ideals  we  strug 
gle  to  maintain  to-day  with  no  more  and  no  less  success:  "Be 
not  avaricious.  Repeat  not  a  word  of  hearsay.  Be  not 
partial.  Let  thy  face  be  bright.  How  good  it  is  when  a 
son  barkens  to  his  father!  If  thou  art  successful  establish 
thy  house.  Love  thy  wife  in  husbandly  embrace,  fill  her 
body,  clothe  her  back.  The  recipe  for  her  limbs  is  ointment. 
Gladden  her  heart  as  long  as  thou  livest." 

Some  fanatics  act  to-day  as  if  social  justice  were  an  inven 
tion  of  the  twentieth  century  A.D.  It  was  a  rickety  old 
machine  in  the  twentieth  century  B.C. 

They  had  strikes  and  panics  then  as  now.  They  had  re 
pentance,  remorse,  pity,  and  tyranny.  They  prayed  and 
lied  and  got  drunk.  They  had  decadence  and  they  slipped 
down  the  path  they  had  climbed  so  hardly.  They  had  athe 
ism,  polytheism,  and  monotheism.  They  had  music  and 
art  and  hymns  and  indecent  fiction,  weapons  and  medicines; 
they  even  had  castor-oil. 

But  tne  land  turned  round  like  a  potter's  wheel. 

Along  came  Koheleth,  who  made  despair  beautiful  in  the 
Book  we  call  Ecclesiastes ;  who  asked,  "What  profit  hath  a 
man  of  all  his  labor  which  he  taketh  under  the  sun?"  He 
noted  that  the  wind  returneth  again  according  to  its  circuits; 

374 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

and  the  rivers  that  never  fill  the  sea,  to  the  place  from  which 
they  come. 

"The  thing  that  hath  been;  it  is  that  which  shall  be,  and 
that  which  is  done  is  that  which  shall  be  done. 

"Is  there  anything  whereof  it  may  be  said,  See  this  is  new? 
It  hath  been  already  of  old  time." 

Yet  Ecclesiastes  advised  mankind  to  make  the  most  of  the 
beautiful  world  in  which  there  is  a  time  and  a  place  for 
everything. 

And  that  seems  the  wise  thing  to  do  without  wasting 
our  while  in  puzzling  out  answers  to  the  unanswerable 
conundrums. 

While  Bob  Taxter  was  fretting  because  of  the  vanity  of 
his  existence,  and  wondering  why  he  never  did  what  he 
wanted  to  do,  Brooks  Adams  was  writing  a  great  preface 
quoting  St.  Paul's  "For  what  I  would,  that  do  I  not;  but 
what  I  hate  that  do  I.  .  .  .1  see  another  law  in  my  members 
warring  against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me  into 
captivity  to  the  law  of  sin  which  is  in  my  members." 

Brooks  Adams  maintained  that  what  St.  Paul  called  "the 
law  of  sin"  is  the  law  of  the  universe,  the  eternal  war  which 
must  forever  debar  the  world  from  equilibrium. 

Adams  declared  that  the  democracy  of  America  has  no 
more  succeeded  than  the  older  tyrannies  of  kings  and 
churches.  The  Law  of  the  Stronger  "is  the  system,  however 
much  we  have  disguised  it  and,  in  short,  lied  about  it,  under 
which  we  have  lived,  and  under  which  our  ancestors  have 
lived  ever  since  the  family  was  organized,  and  under  which 
it  is  probable  that  we  shall  continue  to  live  as  long  as  any 
remnant  of  civilization  shall  survive.  ...  It  has  become 
self-evident  that  the  democrat  cannot  change  himself  from 
a  competitive  to  a  non-competitive  animal  by  talking  about 
it,  or  by  pretending  to  be  already  or  to  be  about  to  become 
other  than  he  is — the  victim  of  infinite  conflicting  forces." 

These  were  the  words  of  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  founders 
of  our  Republic,  and  his  brother's  posthumous  book,  The 
Education  of  Henry  Adams,  became  a  rival  of  popular  fiction 
in  its  captivating  demonstration  of  the  futility  of  education. 
And  Henry  Adams  quoted  Clarence  King's  explanation  of 
the  hopeless  failure  of  the  world,  past  and  future,  as  due  to 
two  mistakes  in  its  creation :  the  differentiation  of  the  sexes, 
25  375 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

and  the  inclination  of  the  ecliptic.  And  we  are  not  likely 
to  correct  either  error. 

We  were  thinking  hard  in  1919  after  the  hard  fighting  of 
the  years  before.  We  'saw  that  illusions  had  been  disproved 
once  more.  The  League  of  Nations  failed  of  its  dream  not 
because  the  men  who  refused  it  were  beasts  of  prey  or  hyenas, 
as  its  advocates  so  bloodthirstily  proclaimed,  but  because 
they  were  convinced  that  this  panacea  was  the  same  old 
paper  poultice  that  had  failed  from  time  immemorial.  It 
could  not  reach  the  seat  of  the  disease  which  is  the  law  in 
the  members  warring  against  the  law  of  the  mind. 

It  is  wiser  to  say,  "I  do  not  know,"  than  to  shout  out  a 
wrong  answer.  Those  who  snap  their  fingers  and  offer  to 
tell  us  what  the  world  is  coming  to  are  those  who  substitute 
enthusiasm  for  intelligence. 

The  important  thing  is  to  keep  remembering  that  the 
world  does  not  change  much  except  in  details.  Its  seasons 
are  cycles.  The  globe  spins  in  an  orbit  among  orbits.  There 
are  always  those  who  cry  at  noon,  "The  night  is  vanquished 
forever."  And  those  who  cry  at  noon,  "It  will  soon  be 
night  and  no  more  noons  will  come."  There  are  always 
those  who  cry  in  midwinter,  "The  spring  will  come  again." 
And  those  who  cry,  "There  will  never  be  another  June." 
Yet  flowers  bloom  and  fade  and  water  melts  and  freezes  and 
melts  again. 

It  is  the  shrewdest  guess  of  all  to  say  the  world  is  coming 
to  where  it  has  been  before,  and  where  it  will  not  stay  long, 
but  where  it  will  come  again. 

The  old  merry-go-round  swirls  us  whether  we  will  or  no. 
We  may  change  horses  and  be  no  better  off,  or  stay  put 
content.  The  band  plays  on.  And  the  tune  is,  "Be 
Strong,  be  Kind,  be  Just,  be  Joyous!" 

Thomas  Burke,  writing  about  his  beloved  London  in  1914, 
said  what  few  would  have  disputed  when  he  said  that  those 
were  petty  times  and  there  were  no  great  men  about. 

Before  he  could  print  his  words  the  Great  War  broke. 
The  nations  rose,  little  and  large ;  the  dancers,  the  muddled 
oafs,  the  flappers,  the  dowagers,  went  forth  into  a  grandeur 
of  sacrifice  and  self-forgetfulness  never  equaled  in  quantity — 
though  often  in  quality. 

The  war  ended  and  the  chaos  began.  Pessimism  took  up 

376 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

business  at  the  old  stand.  Selfishness  returned  to  her  throne. 
Yet  it  was  only  the  necessities  that  relapsed.  There  was  no 
longer  such  a  need  for  such  sacrifice. 

The  same  heroism  is  always  here,  awaiting  the  reveille 
of  the  bugle.  The  men  and  women  are  ready.  It  is  only 
the  opportunity,  not  the  majesty,  that  lacks. 

The  pessimists  cry  that  love  is  dead  and  marriage  a  mock 
ery  because  divorces  are  legal  instead  of  merely  customary 
under  other  names.  All  over  the  world  in  1919  the  rush  for 
divorces  became  a  stampede.  Those  who  make  a  profession 
of  horror  were  duly  horrified. 

In  the  very  center  of  the  divorce-mill,  Chicago,  on  July 
1 8, 1919,  two  hundred  divorces  were  granted  in  one  day,  all 
of  them  to  average  people. 

Yet  in  the  same  city,  on  the  evening  of  Labor  Day  of  the 
same  year,  Mrs.  William  Fitch  Tanner  was  crossing  the  rail 
road  with  her  husband  and  caught  her  foot  between  the 
track  and  a  plank  of  the  walk;  she  could  not  wrench  it  free 
and  an  express  train  flashed  along  the  rails  and  crushed  her 
to  death.  But  her  husband  did  not  seek  to  save  his  life  by 
standing  aloof.  He  cried,  "I'll  stay  with  you,  Mary!" 
clasped  his  arms  about  her,  and  died  in  the  same  instant. 
And  the  flagman,  John  Miller,  also  the  father  of  three 
children,  fought  to  save  the  lovers  and  accepted  the  shattering 
blow  of  that  comet  rather  than  retreat. 

What  perfecter  love  has  all  the  poetry  of  time  to  reveal? 
What  more  did  Leonidas  do,  or  the  sentinel  at  Pompeii? 
We  need  not  be  ashamed  of  our  neighbors  nor  fear  com 
parison  with  antiquity — or  posterity. 

The  animals  share  with  us  the  immemorial  nobilities  and 
cruelties.  The  dragon-fly,  pendent  like  a  jewel  from  the 
hydrangea  leaf  above  my  little  lake,  holds  in  his  tiny  claws 
and  fangs  a  mosquito  doomed  to  suffer  all  the  anguish  in 
its  world.  And  yet  that  mosquito  may  have  filled  some 
human  being  with  malarial  poison,  which  it  got  from  another 
human  being!  An  imperial  spider  on  the  next  bush  with 
her  cables  spread  across  a  wide  realm  darts  to  the  cater 
pillar  that  swings  down  from  the  skyish  tree  overhead,  and 
in  a  trice  rolls  him  up  into  a  silk  parcel  and  ends  his 
exploration. 

But  in  the  water  beneath  the  little  sunfish  scoops  out  of  the 

377 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

gravel  a  nest  like  a  circus  ring  to  be  a  shelter  and  a  playground 
for  her  children;  and  she  darts  forth  in  opalescent  fury  to 
attack  the  vast  black  bass  that  lumbers  near  or  the  Cleo- 
patran  goldfish  that  drifts  too  close  in  a  golden  barge. 

Everywhere  cruelty  rivals  devotion,  slaughter  competes 
with  sacrifice;  and  neither  is  long  in  the  van.  As  Prof. 
E.  O.  Jordan  said  at  the  Congress  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
*'  It  is  almost  a  biological  axiom  that  progress  in  one  particular 
entails  loss  in  others."  It  is  dreadful  that  the  supply  of 
what  we  call  evil  is  never  used  up,  but  the  supply  of  what  we 
call  good  is  equally  inexhaustible. 

It  is  our  costumes  and  our  customs  that  come  and  go; 
ourselves  go  on  forever.  For  what  has  been  truly  changed 
since  the  pyramids  were  built  or  the  arrows  of  cuneiform 
shot  into  the  stone? 

Here  was  Bob  Taxter,  as  ordinary  a  youth  as  could  well 
be.  His  like  fought  mastodons,  paced  the  streets  of  ancient 
Thebes,  raced  through  the  Academe,  carried  a  dagger  in 
Florence,  walked  through  the  terraced  gardens  of  the  ancient 
city  of  Peru  which  lay  hidden  from  our  knowledge  till  a  year 
or  two  ago,  and  ate  "long  pig"  in  the  Polynesian  Edens. 

Bob  had  fought  in  an  airship.  He  had  soared  at  fear 
ful  speed  thousands  of  feet  above  ground;  he  had  turned 
titanic  somersaults  in  the  blue,  and  hurdled  clouds.  He  had 
talked,  as  he  flew,  with  people  on  earth  by  wireless  telephone. 
And  once  he  had  gone  down  beneath  the  sea  in  a  sub 
marine.  He  had  made  battle  with  strange  weapons  in  the 
biggest  war  on  record.  And  yet  when  he  went  about  his 
daily  chores  he  was  altered  not  one  whit  in  appetite,  desire, 
character,  or  ambition.  His  love  could  still  be  expressed  in 
the  words  of  "the  song  of  songs,  which  is  Solomon's": 

"  My  dove,  my  undefiled  is  but  one;  she  is  the  only  one  of 
her  mother,  she  is  the  choice  one  of  her  that  bore  her.  .  .  . 
Who  is  she  that  looketh  fresh  as  the  morning,  fair  as  the 
moon,  clear  as  the  sun,  and  terrible  as  an  army  with  banners? 
.  .  .  Return,  return,  O  Shulamite." 

And  April  Summerlin,  the  modernest  of  modern  girls, 
who  could  drive  a  1919  chariot  at  fifty  miles  or  more  an  hour, 
who  went  abroad  unveiled,  unskirted,  and  unguarded,  could 
still  tell  how,  like  the  Shulamite,  she  wandered  the  city  till 
she  found  her  lover: 

378 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

"  I  held  him  and  would  not  let  him  go  until  I  had  brought 
him  into  my  mother's  house.  .  .  .  Set  me  as  a  seal  upon 
thy  heart,  as  a  seal  upon  thine  arm;  for  love  is  strong  as 
death;  jealousy  is  cruel  as  the  grave;  the  coals  thereof 
are  coals  of  fire,  which  hath  a  most  vehement  flame. 
Many  waters  cannot  quench  love,  neither  can  the  floods 
drown  it." 

Love  like  that  has  blazed  like  that  since  man  was.  It  still 
glows  with  undiminished  flame. 

Stories  like  Bob's  and  April's  are  to  be  found  in  the 
ancientest  papyri  of  Egypt,  baked  in  thousands  of  brick 
pages  in  the  long-concealed  literature  and  life  of  Babylon 
and  Assyria,  handed  down  by  word  of  mouth  in  the  un 
written  literature  of  all  the  tribes. 

We  are  still  thrilling  with  the  same  springs,  harvesting  the 
same  crops,  shuddering  with  the  same  blasts.  Our  loves,  our 
marriages,  our  children  are  what  theirs  were,  pink  and  intol 
erably  beautiful  as  next  spring's  cherry  blooms.  Our  hates, 
our  partings,  our  deaths  are  as  cruel  as  icy  winds  on  lone 
midnights. 

In  Henry  Blossom's  lyric  the  refrain  was,  "I  want  what  I 
want  when  I  want  it."  It  is  the  old,  old  refrain.  We  can 
not  want  what  others  want  us  to  want  when  they  want  us  to 
want  it.  We  cannot  want  what  we  already  have,  since  we 
have  it  already.  The  many  cannot  help  wanting  what  there 
are  few  of,  and  it  is  inevitable  that  the  majority  shall  be 
disappointed.  The  things  we  want  change  forever,  but  the 
habit  of  wanting  what  we  cannot  get  abides  always. 

The  latest  book  that  can  be  bought  to-day  by  the  most 
cautious  and  learned  scholar  in  that  field  says  that  man  has 
lived  on  this  earth  just  about  as  he  is  now  physically  and 
mentally  for  at  least  a  million  years. 

In  all  that  time  he  has  not  learned  to  prevent  or  cure  a 
common  cold  or  an  unwise  love  or  an  unintelligent  marriage. 
He  has  found  no  theology  that  satisfies  him.  There  is  still 
no  one  religion  that  is  even  formally  accepted  by  even  a  third 
of  the  people  of  the  world. 

The  Christian  nations,  having  just  finished  fighting  among 
themselves  the  bloodiest,  fiercest  war  of  all  time,  cannot 
agree  among  themselves  upon  the  terms  of  peace  or  upon 
the  terms  of  their  own  creed;  and  nothing  has  recently  more 

379 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

aroused  the  animosity  of  sect  for  sect  than  a  brief  project  to 
unite  them  all  upon  some  few  terms  of  agreement. 

When  the  actors  made  a  determined  effort  to  build  up  a 
fund  for  the  relief  of  their  aged  and  unfortunate  many 
clergymen  lent  their  help,  but  one  man  of  the  cloth  in  New 
York  denounced  the  stage  entire,  and  declared  from  his 
pulpit  that  God  Himself  had  interfered  to  disturb  one  meet 
ing  by  turning  out  the  electric  lights ! 

A  Jewish  manager,  publishing  his  Christmas  good  greetings 
to  all  the  world,  wished  this  minister  well  and  asked  him  if 
he  could  find  God's  hand  only  in  the  dark. 

Thus  God's  name  is  still  juggled  and  His  procedures  as 
little  understood  as  when  Cain  slew  Abel  over  a  matter  of 
burnt-offerings. 

Yet  charity  is  not  dead.  There  are  tolerant  men  among 
the  fanatics.  Scientists  are  again  as  free  as  in  ancient  Greece 
to  find  out  what  they  can,  and  to  publish  it  without  fear, 
though  here  again  there  is  eternal  bafflement  since  every 
advance  of  knowledge  merely  enlarges  the  number  of  new 
mysteries  and  multiplies  our  wonder  at  the  things  we  cannot 
know. 

There  are  as  many  as  ever  who  make  of  their  ignorance  a 
shelter  and  draw  about  them  a  shawl  of  warm  indifference. 
They  believe  what  they  want  to  believe  and  thank  no  one 
for  telling  them  that  Santa  Claus  does  not  really  go  sleigh- 
riding  over  the  roofs  of  the  world. 

In  spite  of  what  we  think  or  think  we  think  or  think  we 
know,  apple-blossoms  go  on  rioting  in  season.  Some  of  them 
wither;  some  are  torn  off  by  rude  winds  or  tarnished  with 
frost  or  gnawed  by  worms;  some  give  place  to  fruit,  and  that 
fruit  has  its  own  various  destinies.  The  worm  will  spare  a 
few  exceptions  and  they  will  glow  awhile  because  the  worms 
are  busy  elsewhere.  Yet  some  of  these  will  never  ripen  or 
will  be  eaten  by  hogs  or  will  rot  upon  the  ground.  And 
nevertheless  many  will  remain  to  be  shipped  to  far  countries 
or  to  give  their  seeds  to  future  apple-trees. 

Worms,  hogs,  flowers,  fruits,  defeat,  prosperity — all  are 
defeated  or  prosper,  as  may  be.  And  no  one  can  say  of  this 
one  or  of  that  one,  "This  or  that  will  be  its  destiny." 

The  single  wisdom  we  may  trust  is  this:  that  what  has 
always  happened  will  happen  again.  We  may  believe  Epi- 

380 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

metheus,  not  Prometheus,  and  rejoice  grimly  in  the  assurance 
that  for  him  who  can  and  will  make  a  choice  there  are  no 
more  sorrows  than  joys,  no  more  defeats  than  triumphs;  that 
bravery  and  sympathy  can  mitigate  evil  and  collect  usury 
from  good. 


CHAPTER  IV 

BOB  and  April  sat  a  long  while  looking  away  from  each 
other,   but   yearning   together  mightily.     They   were 
bound  together  and  kept  asunder  by  the  same  love. 

Their  mothers  sat  pitiful  and  hardly  knew  what  to  wish 
for,  except  foggily  for  happiness  each  for  her  own  child;  and 
they  did  not  know  whether  that  could  be  best  secured  by  a 
marriage  or  a  parting. 

Something  impelled  them — a  wise  instinct — to  leave  the 
young  people  alone  together  for  their  own  counsel. 

Mrs.  Summerlin  beckoned  Mrs.  Taxter  to  follow  her  into 
a  little  room  off  the  dining-room.  She  called  it  the  library, 
for  she  kept  the  popular  magazines  there. 

They  discussed  the  perils  of  matrimony  from  the  after 
math  of  experience  instead  of  the  more  or  less  blissful 
ignorance  of  instinct. 

Marriage  is  a  necessity  beyond  human  wisdom  or  control. 
It  can  be  regulated  a  little,  like  breathing,  which  is  also  only 
partly  voluntary;  but  Nature  insists  that  any  marriage  is 
better  than  none,  and  she  will  not  be  denied. 

She  will  not  give  a  clue  to  her  specific  desires  and  keeps 
befuddling  the  experimenters.  Some  obey  their  parents  and 
choose  wisely  and  conform  to  all  the  conventions  and  succeed 
as  prettily  as  any  couple  has  a  right  to  expect.  Others 
equally  docile  are  confounded  by  abject  wreckage. 

Some  rely  on  what  they  call  romance,  defy  parents,  neigh 
bors,  and  laws,  and  run  away  to  happiness  and  find  it.  And 
others  of  equal  courage  or  recklessness  go  absolutely  to  smash. 

There  is  neither  guidance  nor  comfort  in  the  chronicles. 

One  thing  alone  is  certain,  that  the  one  subject  forbidden 
to  be  freely  and  fully  discussed  in  the  twentieth  century,  as 
in  all  the  others,  is  the  question  of  sex  relations,  the  most 
important  of  all  to  the  individual,  the  family,  the  race,  the 
world. 

382 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

The  prof  oundest  researches  and  the  sanest  conclusions  ever 
made  were  probably  those  of  Havelock  Ellis,  an  Englishman 
whose  books  were  not  permitted  publication  in  England,  and 
were  only  allowed  in  America  under  such  restriction  that 
only  physicians  and  lawyers  could  buy  them. 

They  tell  nothing  that  it  could  hurt  anybody  to  know,  and 
little  that  everybody  does  not  find  out,  anyway,  but  they 
must  not  be  read  by  the  public,  which  is  encouraged  to  read 
every  form  of  occult  mischief  and  poisonous  mysticism  that 
anybody  cares  to  print. 

Havelock  Ellis  wrote  an  article  for  a  popular  magazine  on 
the  "New  Husband."  He  pointed  out  that  the  venerable 
problems  of  marriage  had  been  complicated  by  the  war  of 
wars.  The  emancipation  of  woman,  having  removed  her 
from  the  curse  of  parasitism,  left  the  man  a  parasite  on  her, 
since  her  hours  must  still  be  governed  by  his,  though  she 
must  readjust  her  household  hours  to  her  out-of-household 
activities. 

Bob  and  April  exemplified  the  new  riddle  perfectly.  She 
had  for  a  year  or  more  gone  where  she  pleased  in  such  costume 
as  she  pleased  at  such  hours  as  she  pleased.  She  had  selected 
a  career  for  herself.  She  would  neither  cook  for  him  nor 
mend  his  clothes  nor  obey  him.  . 

He  had  lived  for  a  year  or  more  a  womanless  life  in  an 
army  of  men.  He  had  learned  to  cook  his  own  food,  to  mend 
and  wash  his  own  clothes,  to  make  his  own  bed,  and  to  dwell 
wherever  the  army  pitched  its  camp. 

How  could  they  adjust  themselves  to  the  old-fashioned 
harness?  It  looks  to  be  a  puzzle  with  no  solution.  It  is. 
But  then  it  always  has  been. 

Pick  any  place  or  period  of  the  world's  life  and  study  the 
marital  estate  from  its  own  documents  and  you  will  find  just 
about  the  same  domestic  average  made  up  of  just  about  the 
same  terms  of  plus  and  minus  fidelity,  purity,  fecundity,  and 
felicity. 

Nearly  everybody  would  deny  this  with  heat,  but  anger 
does  not  alter  the  truth  and  the  facts  go  on  like  clockwork 
whether  they  are  ignored,  distorted,  or  denounced. 

This  was  both  the  danger  and  the  comfort  of  the  problem 
before  Bob  and  April.  They  were  bound  to  marry  somebody 
and  take  a  gamble  with  fate.  If  they  married  each  other, 

383 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

by  any  ceremony  soever,  or  on  any  terms  soever,  the  gamble 
still  remained. 

And  the  gamble  included  not  only  their  own  good  and 
bad  qualities,  but  the  accidents  of  life,  of  health,  of  war  and 
peace,  temptation  and  opportunity. 

Mrs.  Taxter  loved  April  Summerlm  and  Mrs.  Summerlin 
loved  Bob  Taxter.  Both  old  women  knew  an  appalling 
amount  of  the  terrors  of  love  and  matrimony.  They  had 
kept  their  hearts  sweet  through  all  their  experience,  because 
they  chanced  to  be  bees  and  not  wasps  and  to  distil  more 
honey  than  venom  from  the  juices  of  life  that  they  sipped. 

So  now  they  fretted  nobly  over  the  future  of  their  children, 
wisely  believing  that  it  would  mimic  their  own  pasts. 

They  had  come  to  the  point  where  their  children  were  no 
longer  their  own  and  that  was  ache  enough.  But  their 
children  loved  each  other  and  were  not  perfect  either  in 
themselves  or  in  their  loves,  and  there  was  the  rub. 

While  the  white  heads  nodded  and  shook  as  they  told  over 
the  faults  and  the  beauties  of  their  children's  souls,  and  help 
lessly  wondered  what  the  outcome  would  be,  the  young  folk 
sat  equally  dazed  before  the  situation.  The  time  had  come 
to  choose  once  for  all,  and  they  were  not  such  fools  that  they 
could  not  see  the  perils  of  either  choice.  Each  loved  the 
other  well  enough  to  join  or  to  sever  their  lives,  each  as  the 
other  thought  best.  But  neither  could  say  the  fatal  word. 


CHAPTER  V 

BOB  could  say  none  of  the  things  he  wanted  to  say,  and  the 
silence  irked  him.  To  dispel  it,  and  to  advertise  at  least 
one  respect  in  which  he  had  not  failed  ruinously,  he  grunted: 

"Well,  there's  one  bet  I  didn't  lose,  anyway?" 

"Yes?"  said  April,  with  a  tang  of  amused  patronage. 

"Yes.  When  I  was  coming  up  the  Bay  in  the  transport 
that  brought  us  home  I  was  all  excited  about  oil,  and  Jimmy 
Dryden  said  I'd  lose  all  my  money  in  it,  and  I  bet  him  I 
wouldn't.  We  bet  our  war  crosses  on  it.  'Cross  against 
cross,'  I  said.  Well,  neither  of  us  won,  for  I  didn't  put  my 
money  in  oil  at  all.  Not  that  I  didn't  try  to.  I  lost  every 
thing  else — my  self-respect,  and  your  respect  and  your — 
whatever  you  ever  felt  about  me.  But  I  didn't  lose  my  war 
cross.  I'm  glad  I  saved  something." 

April  felt  that  there  were  many  wonderful  things  to  be  said, 
but  she  could  not  think  just  what  they  were.  Usually  when 
she  did  not  know  the  right  thing  to  say  she  said  something, 
anyhow — usually  the  wrong  thing.  She  was  afraid  of  her 
self  now  and  very  tired  with  all  her  soul  and  body  had  gone 
through.  She  basked  in  peace. 

Bob  felt  a  stir  of  love  in  him  like  the  boiling  within  a  vol 
cano,  hot,  sulphurous,  choking,  but  unable  to  utter  itself. 

He  was  the  more  hesitant  to  ask  April  to  marry  him  because 
he  felt  sure  that  April  would  yield  herself  to  his  need  of  her. 

With  her,  his  silence  pleaded  more  eagerly  for  him  than 
any  other  eloquence  could  have  done.  His  self-depreciation 
ennobled  him  in  her  eyes.  Meekness  is  glorious  in  a  lover. 

She  had  the  seeds  of  motherhood  in  her,  and  all  their  urge. 
She  had  exercised  that  spirit  on  her  first  dolls.  Her  lovers 
were  her  later  dolls.  She  was  done  with  them  all  and  wanted 
to  keep  only  one,  her  husband  doll.  And  his  name  was  Bob. 
Yet  she  was  in  no  great  hurry  to  cry  the  banns. 

Oldsters  up-stairs  often  wonder  how  on  earth  two  young 
lovers  can  endure  each  other  for  so  long,  in  silent  communion 

385 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

and  observation.  They  have  forgotten  the  huge  philosophies 
that  must  be  mused  upon,  the  infinite  considerations  that 
must  be  pondered. 

But  while  April  pondered  Bob,  he  pondered  his  own  short 
comings  and  far-goings.  He  grew  miserabler  and  miserabler, 
and  sank  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  rnire  of  his  love.  Yet 
April's  dream  upon  him  grew  richer  and  tenderer,  bridal- 
wise,  mothersome.  As  Whittier  said  of  Amy  Wentworth 
singing,  "The  smile  upon  her  parted  lips  was  sweeter  than 
the  song." 

April  had  been  released  from  the  maidenly  and  ladylike 
restraints  of  yesteryear.  Since  she  could  vote,  why  should 
she  not  propose?  It  was  evident  that  if  any  proposing  were 
to  be  done,  she  would  have  to  do  it. 

"Well,  Bob,"  she  murmured  at  last. 

"Well,  April,"  he  sighed. 

"Haven't  you  got  anything  to  say?" 

"Tons!  But  what's  the  use?  You  know  what  I've  done. 
You'll  never  forgive  it  or  forget  it,  and  I  can't  ask  you  to." 

"You  don't  have  to.  You  haven't  done  me  any  harm  yet 
and  I've  forgotten  already  everything  that  has  happened." 

Bob's  pride  was  never  so  intractable  as  when  he  was 
wrestling  in  the  dust  with  it. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  marry  me  out  of  pity  or  to  reform 
me,  you  know,"  he  grumbled. 

April  laughed  aloud.  "I  haven't  the  faintest  idea  of  at 
tempting  the  impossible  by  trying  to  reform  you.  And  as 
for  pity — I'd  as  soon  pity  one  of  those  royal  Bengal  tigers  in 
the  Zoo." 

He  nearly  smiled  at  this.     But  he  said  nothing. 

Again  she  spoke  in  a  bewildering  mingling  of  whimsical 
raillery  and  divine  desire: 

"Do  you  want  me  to  make  all  the  love?" 

He  tossed  about  in  agony  but  he  did  not  speak. 

Then  she  placed  herself  alongside  him,  picked  up  one  of 
his  hands,  drew  it  resolutely  around  her  waist,  and  lifted  her 
mouth  like  a  fragrant  and  vocal  rose,  whispering : 

"For  Heaven's  sake,  kiss  me!" 

And  he  did — for  Heaven's  sake;  and  found  a  heaven  there. 
He  almost  destroyed  his  mate  with  the  fierce  constriction  of 
his  arms. 

386 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

The  two  anxious  mothers,  frantic  with  suspense,  appeared 
on  the  horizon  just  in  time  to  witness  the  welding.  They 
fell  straightway  into  each  other's  arms  and  began  to  weep 
with  all  their  might. 

They  had  got  their  hearts'  desire,  and  that,  if  ever,  is  the 
time  to  weep. 

For  decency's  sake,  they  ran  out  of  the  room;  but  they 
could  not  stifle  their  clamor. 

Zeb  and  Pansy  heard  it  and  hobbled  out  of  the  kitchen  in 
alarm. 

Questions  and  answers  apprised  them  of  the  situation  in 
the  studio. 

Zeb  tiptoed  to  the  door  and  peeked  in  at  the  love-birds, 
who  had  returned  impatiently  and  insatiably  to  their  billing 
and  cooing  after  the  disturbers  had  vanished. 

Zeb  knew  better  than  to  frighten  them  apart  by  his  laughter 
as  he  had  done  once  before.  He  slipped  secretly  away,  and 
confronted  the  two  old  women  in  the  library. 

From  his  far  greater  age  he  looked  down  upon  the  two  old 
mothers  as  children  still.  He  guessed  at  once  the  cause  of 
their  dismay,  and  with  a  childlike  rashness  ventured  into 
prophecy. 

What  Bob  and  April  would  do  with  their  lives  and  their 
wealth  was  still  unwritten  in  the  books  of  time.  Whether 
they  should  invest  their  money  profitably  or  lose  it  all  or 
part  nobody  could  say.  Whether  they  should  set  up  house 
keeping  in  older-fashioned  ways  or  inhabit  one  of  Mr. 
Kellogg's  community  palaces,  where  everything  was  done  for 
them,  what  difference  would  it  make? 

Newspapers  yet  imprinted  would  have  to  tell  whether  they 
committed  divorce  or  other  crimes  or  good  works  startling 
enough  for  the  front  page  or  the  minor  blazonry  of  the  inner 
regions. 

Distant  columns  of  births  and  deaths  and  marriages  would 
have  to  declare  whether  they  had  children  or  not,  and  hovr 
many,  and  how  and  when  and  where  they  lost  them. 

The  long  and  stormy  courtship  was  but  the  prologue  to  the 
real  play,  and  we  cannot  stay  even  for  the  first  curtain  to 
rise,  or  print  its  undetermined  scenes  and  dialogues  here. 

But  Zeb  could  prophesy,  and  his  guess  forward  was  as 
good  as  anybody's  else  could  be. 

387 


WHAT'S  THE  WORLD  COMING  TO? 

He  began  by  railing  at  his  young  mistresses.  He  had 
recovered  from  his  uncomfortable  liberty  with  a  vengeance. 
He  had  taken  on  not  only  a  master,  but  mistresses — April, 
her  mother,  her  mother-in-law,  and  their  tyrant-slave, 
Pansy. 

"What  you  chillun  cryin'  abote  now?"  he  demanded  of 
the  tremulous  ladies.  "You  don't  need  to  tell  me.  I  know ! 
You'm  frettin'  ova  them  two  doves  in  thah  beca'se  they's 
happy  for  once,  and  you'm  afeard  it  won't  last  forewa. 

"What  ef  it  don't?  Pansy's  been  tellin'  me  them  two 
young-uns  has  fit  each  otha  ewa  sence  they  could  reach  ote 
of  they  cradles.  She  thinks  they'll  go  right  on  fightin'. 
Well,  what  ef  they  do?  It  seems  to  agree  with  'em  mighty 
well,  looks  like  to  me. 

"But  ma  notion  is  that  they  is  jest  abote  fitten  ote.  Seems 
to  me  they  been  quawlin'  because  they  wasn't  togetha. 
They  been  lonelyin'  for  one  anotha  all  this  long  time  and 
ragin'  beca'se  they  had  to  wait  so  long  for  to  be  j'ined  togetha 
in  the  same  hahness. 

"Miss  April  done  went  around  by  her  lonesome  and  win 
the  waw  on  this  side  the  ocean;  Masta  Bob  done  smash  them 
Jummans  to  pieces  on  th'  otha  side. 

"They  got  so  used  to  fightin'  they  nachelly  had  to  fight 
each  otha.  Masta  Bob  nearly  got  linked  up  with  that  Texas 
trash,  but  he  wouldn't  'a'  lived  with  her  for  ten  minutes. 

"The  Lawd  sent  me  around  to  perteck  ma  own.  I  got  my 
masta  divo'ced  in  advance  of  gettin'  ma'ied.  And  that's 
the  best  time. 

"And  now  ef  you  could  see  them  two  settin'  thah  hangin' 
on  tew  each  otha  like  I  seen  'em,  you'd  know  they  troubles  is 
ova.  They  done  finished  they  share  of  fightin'  and  the  rest 
is  happiness. 

"Does  you  'memba,  Miss  Lee — no,  you  don't;  you  wasn't 
bawn  that  fur  back.  But  yo'  pappy  had  a  pair  of  colts  that 
matched  so  perfeck  they  jest  had  to  be  trained  to  double 
hahness.  And  I  was  what  trained  'em. 

"They  was  no  tellin;  which  was  goin'  to  get  broke  fust, 
them  or  me.  When  they  wasn't  fightin'  me  they  fit  each 
otha.  They'd  bite  and  kick  and  squeal  and  rar  up  and  bolt, 
jump  fences,  and  kick  down  stalls.  They  just  wouldn't 
stand  bit,  saddle,  or  bridle  for  the  longest  time  ewa  you  see. 

388 


LOVE  COMES  IN 

"But  by  'n'  by  they  begun  to  change.  Little  ba  little 
they  begun  to  like  the  track  and  the  check-rein  and  the  traces. 
And  one  day  I  hitched  'em  up  alongside  and  tried  'em  out 
round  the  place.  Then  I  hollered,  '  Open  the  gate  and  leave 
us  ote  in  the  main  road.'  And  away  we  went. 

"Oh,  Missy  Lee  and  Miz  Summalin,  they  was  newa  no 
team  went  like  them  two!  I  can  see  'em  now  tossin'  they 
heads,  and  nibblin'  one  anotha  playful,  and  patterin'  away 
down  the  road  makin'  music  with  they  foots. 

"Ef  you'd  'a'  hitched  up  two  tuttle-doves  with  silk  ribbons 
they  couldn't  'a'  flew  no  sweeta. 

"They  was  travelin'  mighty  true  togetha  when  I  got 
foolish  in  the  haid  and  run  off. 

"But  now  I's  come  home  and  I  ain't  goin'  to  see  us  Taxtas 
die  out  whilst  Miss  April  is  handy  and  willin'. 

"Them  two  is  hankerin'  atter  double  hahness  and  the 
road  lays  befo'  'em  as  pritty  as  pritty  and  as  straight  as 
straight.  You  leave  them  two  honeys  to  old  Uncle  Zeb. 
I'll  be  'sponsible.  I  won't  live  forewa,  I  don't  s'pose,  but 
I  got  a  long  while  comin'  to  me  yet,  and  I'm  tellin'  you-all 
we-all  is  jest  goin'  to  commence  to  begin  to  live." 


THE    END 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A    001  455  402    6 


RRKN! 
Ol"*"er*  *  SUM,,,, 


